Me and Coolio in the Valley (of the shadow of death...)

I've been quite busy this week with various pastoral matters. It really is a privilege to stand with people in their time of need, but it can often be sad coming alongside them in their pain. Especially when, as Coolio once rapped, they are passing through the 'valley of the shadow of death'.

As good Christian folks we look to the bible for help when things get hard, but the problem is, sometimes the bible can be such a puzzle. We ask a lot of questions and we flick through it urgently, maybe sometimes angrily, hoping to see something new, something that will solve our issue once and for all. It can seem so forbidding, a lot of words and not a lot of answers.

The thing is, no matter how long we look through, the bible can only offer us the truth. There is a lot of sadness and despair in the world, and the wickedness and hardship which is so appalling to us, is appalling God all the more, because of his great love and care for his creation.

Jesus spent much of his ministry healing the sick, raising the dead, feeding the hungry, but he knew that the problems on the Earth ran too deep and too wide, too personal and too universal to just be whipped away.

In Romans 8 we read the whole of creation is “groaning” in expectation of being made 'right' again. It waits on the second coming of Christ, when all of heaven and earth will be changed and made new. In that time, Revelation says:

“He will wipe every tear from [our] eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things [will have] passed away."

In the mean time, Christ, who died so that we might approach God, not stained and broken like the world, but pure and holy, like himself, remains our comforter still.

I have seen people bear up under enormous strain with Christ's help. I have seen people made whole again, after they have been brought to the very edge. And I have seen the blessings of God paving a way through for his children, even though they “walk through the valley of the shadow of death”.

So not just a line from that song “Gangsta's Paradise” then, but actually a useful promise from Psalm 23...