Friday, April 24. Acts 12:1-19.

This is a repost from the Acts study.

Sometimes good people die. One of the greatest unanswered questions in the scripture has to do with the death of James. Why did he die when Peter was spared? Why was his death glossed over when Stephen’s got so much ink? Wasn’t James one of the three disciples that formed Jesus’ inner circle? How could he just die so suddenly with no fanfare?

Here’s the answer…we don’t know. We have to believe that people were praying for him, and yet his life was not spared. Were they not praying hard enough? Was he living in sin? There is no indication to say that these things were true. So, why did it happen?

A missionary once said, “I am immortal until God is done with me.” That’s really the bottom line. If we understand that life isn’t about us – we aren’t the hero of the story – and that we are simply playing our part in the grand story, then we will be OK with the fact that some people will get to live out the miracle stories while other people will live, and die, in relative obscurity. In God’s Kingdom there is no such thing as the insignificant or the obscure, because God sees it all and cares for it all. God cares about the anthill that was washed away by the rain as much as he cares about the coastline that was washed away by the Tsunami. It is all important to God.

Just this week I received word that two missionaries in Guyana were murdered in their home. They were Wycliffe translators who had been working for years to bring the Word of God in to a tribal language. They were close to completion, but they were killed. Why? We don’t know. We don’t know why some Christians are miraculously healed of cancer while others die. We don’t know why some children die tragically while other people live to 100. We don’t know why James was killed and Peter was spared. All we know is that God knows, and that is enough for us.

There is another side to the lesson from today’s reading. Sometimes, even when we are praying for a miracle, we don’t believe them when they happen right in front of us. Notice that the disciples were praying intensely for Peter’s release, yet, when he came to the door – in direct answer to their prayer – they didn’t believe it.

So, how do we reconcile these two thoughts today? On the one hand we said that we need to leave it all up to God because sometimes good people get killed. Yet, on the other hand we see the prayers of the faithful being answered in a miraculous, resurrection-like, display of God’s power. Which is it? Do we passively concede to the Sovereign will of God, or do we fervently pray in order to see God’s power worked out?

The answer to this question exposes the very nature of God. The answer is…both. God calls us to pray fervently so that we will become aligned to God’s  will and see God’s glory. Yet, it is God’s will and not ours that will be done. As servants of the Almighty we need to live and pray each day holding two things in our hearts: first we need to live in expectancy that God can and will do miracles in and through us when we are available to God, and, two, it has little to do with us and everything to do with God. We can trust God no matter what.

James died and for that we mourn. Peter was spared to preach another day, and for that we rejoice. Through it all, it is the Kingdom of God that advances, not us.