(Page 7 of 9) - “The agony in the Garden was the agony of the Son of God in fulfilling His destiny as the Savior of the world. The veil is pulled back here to reveal all that it cost Him to make it possible for us to become sons of God. His agony was the basis for the simplicity of our salvation. The Cross of Christ was a triumph for the Son of Man. It was not only a sign that our Lord had triumphed, but that He had triumphed to save the human race. Because of what the Son of man went through, every human being can now get through into the very presence of God.”
And then, for emphasis, Jim read the last sentence a second time: “Because of what the Son of Man went through, every human being can now get through into the very presence of God.”
We learned from David’s cameraman that moments after he heard this last voicemail that morning, just after he had heard that last line twice, David climbed out of the Bloom Mobile and collapsed, and himself entered into the very presence of God.
Who can fathom such things? It seems that there are very rare times in life when the hand of God is easy to see, when God almost desperately seems to want us to know that He is involved in a situation, that it isn’t something that just happened, but that He was involved in orchestrating it, that He is with us in all of its details. It’s at these times that you know how tenderhearted our God is, because in communicating to us that He was involved, God is telling us that as terrible as things might seem, He is with us. We are not alone. I cannot doubt that the extraordinary events surrounding David’s death are a powerful example of one of those times. * *
But there was still another thing to marvel at in all of this, and that concerned Oswald Chambers himself, the author of My Utmost for His Highest. I found it touching and telling that in that last email David told his wife that he had moved the book to the inside of his flak jacket so that it could be closer to his heart. Even in this God seemed to be communicating something.
That’s because as I learned more about Oswald Chambers, I noticed some truly remarkable similarities between him and our friend David. Like David, who was 39, Oswald Chambers had died young, at age 43. Like David he died among troops during a time of war, WWI. Both of them had died in the desert of the Middle East, in a warzone, David in Iraq and Oswald Chambers in Egpyt. And as with David, who died of an embolism, something that was neither necessarily serious, nor combat-related, so, too Chambers died of a non-combat-related illness, and one that one wouldn’t normally think of as life threatening: he died from a complication that arose after having his appendix out. I couldn’t help being amazed by these strange parallels. But there was a final parallel between these two young men and their deaths in the desert of the Middle East, as non-combatants during a war, that was most interesting of all.
It was that both of them died at a time and in a way that made everyone around them wonder how God could have possibly let it happen. Both of them had showed such extraordinary promise and had awakened such great hopes for their futures and all they might accomplish for the Kingdom of God. Both had been taken long before they had realized even a fraction of those great hopes. Both of them had died in a way that particularly staggered those -- especially those -- of great and abiding faith.
When Oswald Chambers died, the thousands of young men whom he had given Bible lessons, and all those who knew Chambers, were devastated. He had been so extremely talented and valuable to them, and now all of that talent was unavailable. How could God let that happen? Who would teach them about God now? 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | Next Page › | 
