Recently I heard someone say they didn’t like the song ‘Blessed be Your name’. They explained that they didn’t agree with the lyrics ‘He gives and takes away’. The reason being that ‘God’ doesn’t take away, it is the enemy that takes away from us. Well, this bugged me.
At first, because I wanted to argue, that the heck He doesnt take away from us. What else do you want to call it when God takes your daughter and then the man who was like a father to you? I had already struggled with this song in the past over this very reason. It just made me so mad sometimes. But then, as I thought about it, I began to see a different perspective.
The thought came to me; why is taking away a bad thing? Is something being taken away always a bad thing? And then I thought about addictions. When God heals someone of an addiction, He took that addiction away. That isn’t a bad thing. When God clears the way for a person to get out of an abusive relationship, He is taking them away from their abuser. For sure not a bad thing.
As my thinking went along, and I thought of my own daughter and my feeling like she was taken away from me, I began to question what was really taken away. I felt like she had been taken away, but do you know what God had really taken away? God took away her pain, God took away her sin and her shame, He took away this fragile sickly life she had and He gave her a new body and a new home. He took her away from the fear and the suffering and He received her unto Himself.
As my thoughts went round and round these things, I was again reminded that grieving is not for those who have gone on before, but for those of us left behind. We hurt for our loss, for what we have had taken away. And thats as it should be. Its ok to rejoice for those who have on gone on before, and grieve for our own loss. Grieving for our own loss, doesn’t mean we aren’t happy for those who have gone on before, it means we acknowledge that a piece of us is broken, missing from our lives. That our lives will never again be the same. It gives new definition to the saying, ‘one mans loss is another mans gain.’ Those of us left on this earth may struggle with what we have lost; but as long as we keep our hope in The One who gives and takes away, we can be assured that He one day he will ‘take away’ all that holds us to this earth and ‘give’ us our loved ones and a place inside heavens gates.
So, you tell me; does God give and take away?
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