We will Cry with Hope

Three children died last night. I knew them. I'd held them and played with them. They'd been to our church many times. I'd seen them laugh and seen them cry.

I've been studying and teaching a lot about prevenient grace. I've been thinking a lot about the age of accountability. On mornings like this, the information becomes flesh. The arguments against the doctrine becomes cruel sounding. The Scriptures pointing to it become sources of peace and hope.

It's not a doctrine we take from any one passage. We believe dying children go to be with the Lord because of our beliefs about the very nature of our Lord. We believe He is loving and just and we have a hard time understanding how any other scenario fits with those qualities. But the doctrine is not without Scriptural support either. The Bible typically treats sin as the willful violation of a known law of God. The Bible is quite clear that children don't generally know right from wrong. The Bible speaks of God as one who takes ignorance into account. The Bible implies that the kingdom belongs to little children. The grace of God lovingly reaches out to such as these. They are absent from the body, but present with the Lord.

And so we do not grieve like the rest of men. We do grieve, but not without hope. We know that the God of the universe has, and will do, what's right. We are comforted knowing that they are comforted. We are hopeful knowing that we will see them again. That, one day, we'll be able to play together again.

Steven Curtis Chapman recently lost a young daughter. He had previously written these words, which I now echo:

This is not at all
How we thought it was suppose to be
We had so many plans for you
We has so many dreams
But now you've gone away
And left us with the memories of your smile
And nothing we can say
And nothing we can do
Can Take away the pain
The pain of losing you

And we will cry with hope
We can say good-bye with hope
'Cause we know our good-bye is not the end
And we will grieve with hope
'Cause we believe with hope
There's a place where we'll see your face again
We'll see your face again

And never have I known
Anything so hard to understand
And never have I questioned more
The wisdom of God's plan
But through the cloud of tears
I see the Father smile and say ' well done.'
And I imagine you
Where you wanted most to be
Seeing all your dreams come true
'Cause now your home
And now your free

And we will cry with hope
We can say good-bye with hope
'Cause we know our good-bye is not the end
And we will grieve with hope
'Cause we believe with hope
There's a place where we'll see your face again
We'll see your face again

We have this hope as an anchor
'Cause we believe that everything
God promises us is true

And we will cry with hope
We can say good-bye with hope
'Cause we know our good-bye is not the end
And we will grieve with hope
'Cause we believe with hope
There's a place where we'll see your face again
We'll see your face again

We wait with hope
And we ache with hope
We hold on with hope
We let go with hope