When God Takes a Child

“While he was still speaking, there came from the ruler’s house some who said, “Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the Teacher any further?” But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the ruler of the synagogue, “Do not fear, only believe.” (Mark 5:35–36, ESV)

When Calvin’s infant son died, he remarked, “God has given me a son, but He has taken away my little boy!” The great puritan John Owen and his wife, Mary Rooke, brought eleven children into this world. All but one, a daughter, preceded them in death.

None can measure the pain of losing a child—not even, I suspect—those who have endured it. They can see the depths, but they can’t see the bottom. They feel so sad that they wonder will they ever be truly happy again. Will they ever laugh again, with all their hearts, without the haunting shadow of that great sadness lingering at the end?

Our heavenly Father also knows what it is to lose a Son. The measure of His love, after all, was the cost of its gift (John 3:16). He so loved the world that He gave His only Son. This was not easy for God to do. In fact, it may have been the only truly difficult thing God has ever done. If He can say to Ephraim, his wicked earthly son, standing on the verge of Assyrian exile, “How can I give you up, O Ephraim? My heart recoils within me (Hosea 11:8)?” Was there no recoil in the Father’s heart as He watched His only Son tread that lonely, Godforsaken path to outer darkness? 

If our careless words grieve the heart of God’s Holy Spirit, and they do (Eph 4:30), dare we say God watched the cruel spectacle of Golgotha without a deep, Fatherly sadness?-- a sadness suitable to His unchangeably blessed and beautiful nature? I am out of my depth here; we all are. We are, after all, talking about God Himself. 

Theological errors abound on every side when we describe the affections of God, but we must not shrink from describing God with words He uses to describe Himself. Whatever our Fathers meant when they described God as without “body, parts, and passions,”--and they meant to describe something very important indeed–I am quite sure they did not mean to paint the Rock of ages as an inert, block of stone.

I say this because this is the God who gave Hunter, that delightful, glad-hearted lad, to us. And this is the God who used such a terrible accident to take that same lad home into His embrace and away from ours. And I can tell you with absolute and unshakeable conviction, God’s heart was moved with compassion for the Sheltons as He did.

Though Strange may seem God’s ways
Your hasty lips refrain, 
For here we see but broken lengths  
Of glory's perfect chain. 
The husbandman of heaven  
His tree may freely prune, 
So challenge not His ways or say  
He cut this branch too soon. 
By wounding and by loss  
He seeks pure fruit at last; 
Though shaken now by storm and wind  
Yet still the root is fast. 
And if the Lord's fair hand  
Should pluck a little rose, 
Or harvest green mid-summer fruit  
Ere sweet and ripe it grows, 
Then meekly own His right,  
And Grace will Christ afford, 
Till faith has taught your weeping heart  
To kiss a striking Lord. 
Should time's best comforts die  
The heritage remains; 
Hold fast in faith till Christ transplants  
His tree to sunnier plains.

To all our broken hearts, Jesus stands as a kind but gentle colossus, the Lord of life and the Lord of death. Holding the keys of death and hell in His pierced hand, He says, “Do not fear, only believe!”