He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. –Ecclesiastes 3:14
The Lord brings death and makes alive;
he brings down to the grave and raises up. –I Samuel 2:6
Three decades ago now (to the year) I started struggling heavily with anxiety, depression, and spiritual warfare that was beyond me. It was this that the Lord used in my life to draw me to Him in very serious and sober ways. This struggle, in a very intense way (on a continuum), continued in earnest for at least a decade. It was hellish. But it was also within this white-hot fire of trial and tribulation wherein I began learning to wait on the LORD, realizing that His mercies are new every morning. Even so, in the depths of that season, there were moments where I struggled, heavily, with suicidal ideation. It was as if the Enemy of my soul had taken me to a high place telling me to throw myself off and end it all; and this happened over and over again. What the LORD brought to me in the midst of this was a way to combat it through His Word (sort of like Jesus did in Matthew 4). The passage above, I Samuel, coupled with a growing and healthy fear of God, became one of my go-to passages when these suicidal thoughts would start creeping in again. Later, in counsel of other Christian brothers I had deep fellowship with, some of them would share with me that they too were struggling with suicidal ideation. They too were in a deep season of growth with the triune God, and as such were experiencing these fiery darts from the evil one. And I was able to reiterate to them that God alone has the right to give and take life; that it isn’t our spot, no matter how dread the circumstances might seem to be in that particular moment or season of life.
I share the above with the hope of being empathetic with others, maybe even some of my readers, who have gone through similar things, or who might be going through such things currently. I am also sharing all of this as a prelude into a brief passage I want to share for us from Karl Barth. The passage itself isn’t being as vulnerable, per se, about the personal trials of life that each one of us face. But it is addressing, at the very core, the fact that God alone is the giver, sustainer, and fund of life itself. I think understanding that fact, that principled reality before God, can go along way when we can internalize its facticity in our own lives coram Deo.
Fourthly, it is not by an obscure fate or neutral decree, but in receipt of a divine benefit, that he is “alive.” The command of God, claiming him as a living person, inscribes upon his heart the fact that, coming wholly from God, it is always (whether recognised or not) an advantage, a good and worthwhile thing, for everyone to be alive. It is not wholly an advantage nor absolutely good and worthwhile. “My flesh and my heart faileth: but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever” (Ps. 73.26), and: “Thy lovingkindness is better than life” (Ps. 63.3). But within its limits it is good and worthwhile because the one great opportunity of recognising and experiencing the grace of God, and therefore to continue to live. This is true no matter what we may see or not see in life of meaning, hope, success, happiness or even goodness. And wherever we have to deal with a living soul, we have to do eo ipso with this divine miracle of grace.[1]
“Choose life not death.” Amen, amen.
[1] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics III/4 §55 [336] The Doctrine of Creation: Study Edition (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 12.