What Can We Do When Disaster Comes
What Can We Do When Disaster Comes
Funeral Sermon for Ted Kolb
February 11, 1999
Isaiah 10:3: What will you do on the day of reckoning, when disaster comes from afar? To whom will you run for help? Where will you leave your riches?
Grace, Mercy, and Peace to you from God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. When God caused the words of this text to be written, his people were suffering one disaster after another. I’m sure it was a time that caused many to think that God was either punishing his own people, or had turned his back on them.
Jim, your family has been hit by one disaster after another, and it would not surprise me if you and your family had the same kind of thoughts as those Isaiah spoke to. Especially now, with the untimely and sudden death of “Ted”.
Joahan, when I think about your comment to me of how “Ted” “loved life to the fullest extent,” I can’t help but think of the words our Savior Jesus Christ spoke. He said, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” To hear these words at such a time might also make a person wonder “Where is God? Is He punishing us?”
All-in-all, disasters in a person’s life often do raise the question, “What can we do when disaster comes?” I believe each of us can take something home with us from Isaiah’s words that will teach us something about our God, and, at the same time, comfort us in this time of disaster and grief.
First, notice how the question does not ask “if” disaster comes. It says “when” disaster comes. In other words, there is no doubt, disaster will come. We have all, or, we will all experience it. In our humanness we minimize this reality by trying to comfort ourselves with words like, “It’s just a part of life.” But I would like to challenge that way of thinking by asking if we really do think that God intended for us to suffer disasters? The answer, of course, is no! God did not, nor does he want disasters in our lives.
I believe the message of Scripture is sufficiently clear when it says, “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them … God saw all that he had made, and it was good.” But even in his good creation, disaster would come all too soon. Deception, misunderstanding, misrepresentation, and out-and-out lies about God and his good intent, would literally undo the good God had made.
That describes the first sin. The sad part of that is that we all are pro-created in the likeness of that first man after he had sinned. Disaster changed everything in God’s good creation. And that disaster is the taproot of all disasters in our lives, even today. So, the question remains. “What can we do when disaster comes?”
There is no insurance that can restore life to the dead. But there is assurance that out of death God can, and does, create life. Where does that assurance come from? I know of only one sure place; God’s Word and His abiding presence in the Holy Spirit.
In 1970 I was 24 and serving as a Navy man in Viet Nam. My best friend, who was also 24 and married, died in a disastrous plane crash at sea, that same year. And I remember asking the question, then, What can I do about this disaster? It did not occur to me at that time that there was nothing I could do. But God did something totally unexpected. He brought the assurance of life even in death.
You see, that is why God sent His Son, Jesus Christ, into the world to live among us. He came, that “they might have life,” and have it to the fullest extent. So, What can we do when disaster comes? We can remember from whence true life comes. It comes from the everliving God. Jesus said, “I lay down my life—only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father.” Dearly beloved of God, the the assurance of life being brought forth from death is Jesus Christ who on the third day was raised again in glory.
Now, some might wonder what good that does for us. We are not Jesus Christ. This is true. However, there is this promise from God: “Don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be untied with him in his resurrection.”
It’s hard to believe, I know, just how much God can and does accomplish through such simple means. Even so, it is for the benefit of all that God shows his love on such a disastrous agent as the Cross. And then He guarantees it with the resurrection of the dead in Jesus Christ.
Each of us will remember “Ted” in our own way. But the most important thing is that God remembers him according to his own word of promise and mercy. Likewise for us.
Disaster inevitably comes to each and every one of us. There is no doubt. And each of us will inevitably ask the question when it does come, What can we do when disaster comes? We can remember the Word and promise of God in Christ Jesus. “I have come that they may have life, and have to the full.” Amen.