Holy Ground – ChurchEdge

I was approached the other day by a group of teenagers conducting a study on faith and belief in America. My reaction was immediately one of curious excitement. How exciting to find young people thinking through such vital matters, whether a project thought up in their own minds or assigned by a teacher. And I offered a quick prayer that God would speak clearly to them through their study and help me to speak clearly in my answers.

“Who or what in your words is God?” they asked first. “The answer we give to this question,” I said, “is one that touches all of life. He is Father, Creator, and King. He is the only One whose existence relies on no other, the only One who is in and of Himself perfect. He is the Hunter and Husband of our hearts and minds.”

Their second question asked whether or not I believed in absolutes and why. “Yes, I believe in absolutes; life doesn’t make sense without them,” I said. “Imagine you are on a train and suddenly your brain tells you that something is moving, what will you do every time? You find a stationary object, a building or a tree, something that orients you, something that tells you whether it is your train or the train beside you that is moving. Absolutes are the stationary principles that are built into life and help us as we move through it. And they are truths which point us to the Giver of truth.” My young interviewers liked the illustration, which was not my own; I liked their responsiveness, their inquisitive interest in God and in truth.

And then they asked their last question: “If you were standing before God and had the opportunity to ask Him anything at all, what would you ask Him?” I cannot explain it except to say that my words seemed to leap out of me as I responded to their question almost involuntarily, “I would ask Him why my dad had to die so young.”

It is fascinating how the mind works because it simply cannot sever itself from the heart. As Fredrick Buechner has said, man cannot live his life only within his skull. In the midst of presenting the apologetics that govern my life, in the midst of offering the reasons for the hope that is within me, with one simple question I was swept back to that tender spot and reminded of my desperate need for these reasons, for the God that intimately reaches both my heart and my mind.

For undeniably, God was near to us through my father’s short bout with cancer. Because though painfully realized, we can see the evidence of Romans 8:28 that in all things God works for good, and we can see as Joseph himself saw, that even in the midst of harm, God had intentions for good. And furthermore, because I have readily seen that there is a certain holy ground within a broken heart. Though a tenderness remains, we find in our deepest sorrow, the tender touch of God.

As holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel has noted, what we say about God we must be able to say over the darkest pits of life. Indeed, what we know about God, we must be able to profess in the midst of brokenness, in the middle of a very dark world, in the midst of disorienting pain and the angst of “why?”

I am absolutely convinced that a biblical theology and a sound apologetic is the balm to life’s deepest wounds. For in Christ we find the only One who can provide coherent answers to life’s most probing questions. Through the Cross we find meaning in suffering. We find the holy ground of God’s broken heart and body, crushed for our iniquity, broken that we may find Him. We find the One who not only bore our sin but bore our sorrows. And in our relationship with God, found in Christ, made possible by this Cross, we find the One who not only is, but is here.

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