It’s snowing today in Omaha; just a light covering on the ground, about an inch or two. Enough to make the roads slick and walkways treacherous but not enough to cover the tips of the blades of grass that are still green. My first snow in Omaha. As I step out into it, I say a prayer, “Lord, please protect my life as I drive to work.” Then I do a double take, and added, “if you want to.” The subtext in my mind being, ‘you sure didn’t want to protect Dr. Munroe and his family from that crash…” It’s one of those things about Christianity sometimes – faith vs. reality. This is a man of faith, and works…plenty of works for the kingdom; yet, his life was snuffed out unceremoniously as if it didn’t really matter whether he lived or died. Was God not big enough to spare his life, plane crash or not? Was the crash inevitable? Was he out of line with the will of God hence his fatality? Was…
So many questions and such a buffeting of my faith. Funny, as I write this, I remember folks who asked a similar question of Jesus when they encountered a man who was born blind – “who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus replied that neither sinned but that the works of God might be displayed (John 9: 1-7). Good thing, Jesus was there to respond to that situation – AND he healed the blind man. Unfortunately, He’s not here and today is another day Myles Munroe has not risen from the dead. It is such a painful reality that I will no longer have the opportunity to watch or change the channel when I spot him preaching on television in the morning.
Dr. Munroe was a good role model for us. Religion aside, I rooted for Myles Munroe because he was a black man doing right. He was exemplary. Yet, like too high a percentage of black males, he did not live past the age of 60! He ate right, exercised, and even fasted…yet is life was snuffed out in the twinkling of an eye. I tell you, it’s difficult to imagine that God’s not against the black man.
It’s just plain wrong. Leaders of all kinds of nefarious and terrorist groups are still alive. All time horrible, terrible, bad guys fly planes every day; some even own their own planes; they have not been cut down in broad daylight. Yet, one black man who was making tremendous impact; one shining star in the midst of thick darkness, died on a Sunday!
Even the irony of it – he died on the Lord ’s Day?! A sacrifice to a God who does not accept human sacrifices? A triumph of the devil over an omnipotent God? An inevitable law of nature that once put in motion was irreversible like gravity? The Word does warn us that “in this world, we will have tribulation.” Indeed, we are subject to human and natural laws and suffer the ramifications of such subjection. Flying into a crane would cause a crash which would take the lives of everyone aboard a small aircraft. And the cost of living in a third world country in which most of the black race is confined is an ever-present threat of death from any number of inefficiencies, malfunctions, and freak events.
Yet, we hear of astonishing miracles every day; like that man whose fishing trawler capsized and everyone on board died except for him. He survived in a small enclosure breathing in his own CO2 for three days before he was rescued! Hmm…he lived and Dr. Myles Munroe died. And I have to face another morning without Myles? Just makes you have to fight to remain in faith. Perhaps that’s why Jesus mused, “When the Son of Man cometh, shall he find faith upon the earth?” (Luke 18: 6).
That I may keep the faith, I comfort myself as Job did – “the Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1: 21). And to it I add, “Lord, I believe, help my unbelief” (Mark 9: 24). God after all is “Kabiyesi’ (the unquestionable one).
Selah
Tuesday, November 11, 2014
