My friend is dead...

What causes us to change? To go from old to new, from broken to whole. As a believer my first response is the Gospel, it is what brings us from old to new, from dead to alive. But how, how is it possible for news, good news, to change me?
I look at the story of my life, a short story but a story nonetheless, and awe. Not because I’m worthy of awe, but because the tale of my life, the narrative from beginning to now is like looking at the vastness of the stars on a clear night, or driving up on the Rocky mountains from the Midwestern planes. I realize my smallness, baseness, meanness that though it is ‘my life’ my life has had nothing to do with me…
Let me explain the reason for my awe.
“My friend is dead.”
This was the thought that swirled about in my head on that rainy May morning.
“My friend, who I talked to just last night, is dead.”
My class walked around like zombies, going from shoulder to shoulder weeping bitterly. We who were close called other friends in other schools to herald heartbreaking news. ‘Dazed’, ‘hit with a Mac truck’, ‘distraught’ these would be the words to describe us on that day. On that day, in an instant, we, I was changed.
But that was not the Gospel that changed me was it? It was the opposite, right? I think it was, there was a hope, quite frankly, completely outside pointing to something more, something better, and something satisfying. Saying, “This life is not all, there is more. The curtain will fall, your failing ripped tent will be made into a mansion.” Even though the tears cried were bitter; even though the life lost was valuable; and even though death seemed bigger, and scarier, and more real than ever before there was hope.
A hope that pointed to our biggest problem being taken care of, namely of sin defeated and life without end. Though a dear friend lay dead in a morgue we began to realize the stark reality of the state of ourselves. We who had been spiritually dead and in the morgue now lived vibrantly and breathed wholesomely because of Jesus’ death and resurrection.
The despair I had that day in the death of a friend gave way to hope, a hope that my life had never seen or known before, a hope that continues to fuel a fire.
So when I sit across the table at Starbucks from my friend’s father and say, “I’m glad your son died, because in his death God taught me the Gospel.” The awe of seeing the story of my past gives way to hope for the story God has.
How does the Gospel change us? How does good news change us? By showing us God and his sovereignty in both the fantastic and the unimaginably painful. By breaking us of the ‘control’ we think we have and showing us the Controller. By shattering the bubble we live in and showing us the vastness of the goodness of God. So how does the Gospel change us? By the grace of God.