Pastor David asked me to share a personal story today about renewal. I like to tell stories. But I will also admit that I’m generally far more comfortable sharing other peoples’ stories than I am sharing my own. So what I offer you tonight, I offer you in humility. What I see of God, I see only through a mirror dimly. But I hope what I have to say can be useful.

David’s email to me: “Can you think of a time, or maybe you're in one right now, that was a challenge for you? What was the source of your renewal? What was that journey like for you?”

What has been your valley of the shadow?

I would like to offer some thoughts tonight about two things. I would like to talk about suffering. And I would like to talk about grace.

Yea, for though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death.

I’ve lived much of my life on the edge the valley of shadow. The men in my family all seem to become either preachers or lawyers. And I, sadly, chose the dark side. I graduated from law school about 15 years ago, and since then I’ve spend most of my career in government service, where I specialize in handling criminal prosecutions in appeals before higher courts.

People generally don’t appeal minor crimes to a higher court. And that means I’ve spent almost every day of my professional life dealing with the very worst things that human beings can do to one another. I’ve lost count of the number of murder cases I’ve prosecuted. I’ve become a particular expert in the prosecution of cases involving sexual assault and child molestation. I’ve seen all the ways in which people cause each other to suffer. Their friends. Their partners. Their children.

 And not just the victims in my cases. The defendants who I prosecute also suffer. They inflict so much pain on others. But so many of them also carry so much pain themselves. No person is defined solely by the worst thing they ever did. And every crime I see is a tragedy for everyone involved. Including the person who committed the crime.

 Yea, for though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death.

There’s a common way the world has of relating to God. I like to think of this as God the heavenly genie. The granter of wishes. We just have the right faith. To follow the right rules. To do the right deeds to make God pleased. And God will reward us with wealth or happiness whatever else our heart desires. And if we don’t have happiness? If we suffer? Well, then we should have done better. Its a cold idea. It’s such a comforting idea in a way. If only we’re good enough, we will never have to suffer.

Or there’s another confortable way the world has of relating to God. Perhaps suffering isn’t punishment. Perhaps it’s actually necessary. Perhaps it’s all part of God’s greater plan. How many of you have gone through suffering in your life, only for some well-meaning friend or family member to tell you: “Don’t feel bad. It’s all part of God’s greater plan.” How many of you have wanted to kick that well-meaning friend or family member in the shins?

Or how many of you have known someone who truly believed that all suffering has a greater purpose? And then that person experienced suffering themselves–suffering that truly had no discernable purpose. And when they did, their faith crumbled.

Yea, for though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death.

These easy ideas about God and suffering may sometimes be comforting.

But they are also so very wrong. I don’t claim to understand why we suffer. But with everything I’ve seen in my life on the edge of the valley of shadow, I cannot believe that suffering is part of God’s plan for us. I have seen too many people in tears. Too many families grieving a lost son or daughter. Too many children forced to bear things no child should ever have to bear.

There is no explaining this. And to its credit, the Bible does not try to. The book of Job goes on for chapter after chapter about how suffering cannot be explained. As 2 the teacher tells us in Ecclesiastes “There is something else meaningless that occurs on earth: the righteous who get what the wicked deserve, and the wicked who get what the righteous deserve. This too, I say, is meaningless.”

All of us will suffer in one way or another. And some people will suffer more than others, even though they do not deserve it.

Yea, for though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death.

So what about renewal then? If God does not promise us freedom from suffering, what DOES God offer us?

God offers us grace.

In October of 2022, I was scheduled to argue the most important case of my career. It took me months to prepare, working holidays and nights and weekends. And if we were successful, my hope was that it would set a statewide precedent that would make it easier to prosecute serial rape cases in the future.

About two weeks before I was scheduled to argue the case, my wife of ten years told me that she wanted a divorce. I’d always known that I had wanted to have children. And throughout our entire marriage, she had promised me that she wanted children too and that the time just wasn’t right yet. But now, she had changed her mind.

It’s hard to generalize about what a divorce will mean to a person. Often times it’s the culmination of a long process that both parties saw coming. Sometimes it’s even a relief–a way out of an unhealthy or abusive relationship. For a certain 3 subset of people though, divorce comes unexpectedly, and with a breaking of years of trust. And I can tell you from my own experience–and from the experience of the handful of others I’ve met who’ve gone through it–that sort of divorce is different. It doesn’t feel like breakup. It feels like death. Indeed, in some ways it feels worse than death because it doesn’t just change one relationship. It changes dozens of loving relationships with friends and family members that can never be the same again.

Yea, for though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death.

The next several months were the hardest of my life. I lost nearly 15 pounds. And I rarely slept more than 5 or 6 hours a night.

And yet, I found grace.

In those first initial days, I wanted to just fall apart. But I didn’t. And not from any sort of special effort on my own part. I simply couldn’t fall apart.

There was a case I had to argue. There were victims who had suffered far beyond whatever I was suffering now. And I had to speak for them. And so kept walking. Years before, I’d felt called to serve something bigger than myself. And now, with my own self in tatters, that bigger something carried me through.

Yea, for those I walk through the valley of the shadow of death.

And when the case was finally over, I started to feel grace echo throughout my life so many other ways. The love of the friends and family members who reached out to me. The way the wind shimmers in the mountain aspens. The first shoots of new love under spring rains. And the way that, when we stumble, all our voices come together to carry one another when we sing. God of daybreak, God of shadow, come and light our hearts anew.

That, I think, is the way of grace. God is not the reason why terrible things happen. God is not the reason why our dreams are dashed. Why our plans come to nothing. Why victims cry out for justice. Why hearts fill with hate. Why people reject us for 4 who we are, or who we love. Why a father mourns the loss of his son. Or why a daughter mourns the loss of her mother.

God is not the author of these terrible things. But God’s promises to transform all of these terrible things through grace and to bring us in renewal to something good. In this season of lent most of all, we remember that promise. That God in Christ was one of us. That Christ suffered alongside us, even unto death on the cross. And that God turned this, too, into abounding, amazing grace.