Thinking About Norah

Recently, my friend and I spoke to some moms about Moms in Prayer, an initiative started many years ago to help encourage moms to pray for their kids’ schools. We spoke of answers to prayer we had seen and of praying evil away from our schools.  We encouraged them to start Moms in Prayer groups in their children’s schools, even if it meant just praying with one other mom.

During the question and answer time, a woman raised her hand and asked something I wasn’t altogether prepared for.  “I too believe in prayer,” she said, “I pray hard for things, and I don’t know where else to ask this question.  I’ve been begging God to save Norah Brubaker’s life, and she just died. What am I supposed to do with that?”

I knew about this sweet little 10-year-old girl who had just passed away.  Our entire community, it seems, had been begging God for her life for the last month.  I had read on social media about Norah’s diagnosis of septic shock, the eventual loss of her left leg to save her life, and then the loss of her right leg, and then her death. It was tragic to watch, even from afar. I can’t imagine her family’s pain.

And so in these hard times, the age-old questions emerge, “Why do bad things happen to good people? Why didn’t God answer our many prayers? Why didn’t he heal Norah?”

I stumbled to answer her question.  The why questions are always tough, especially when we are asking about death because death is an imposter.  It’s hideous.  It’s monstrous. And even though we all have to face it, death feels unnatural, and it is unnatural because it was not the way it was supposed to be from the beginning.

When Satan entered our beautiful world and tempted us to believe that God is not good and that he doesn’t love us, we took the bait, and at that moment, everything in our beautiful world broke, including our bodies.  We now live in a broken world where our bodies don’t function as we want them to and where cancer and disease win too often. We live in a world where evil is too prevalent. And God doesn’t rescue us from it all. That’s pretty clear.

I think of the teaching in John 6 where Jesus says some difficult things that make some of his followers desert him.  For some reason, Jesus didn’t’ run after them and beg them to come back but instead turned to his disciples and said, “Are you also going to leave?” (John 6:67)

“Lord, to whom would we go?”  Peter says.  And so, we must ask the same question.  Where else do we go with our grief over the death of sweet Norah?  Do we turn away from God? Do we embrace atheism?  Is that where the answer lies?  Or is there some other place or person or religion where we can run?

Another story from scripture that comes to mind when I think about grief is the time when Jesus got the news that his cousin John the Baptist had been beheaded. John’s death was made even more despicable because he died as a result of a silly game a powerful king had played. Jesus seemed genuinely surprised by this news and “got into a boat and headed to a lonely place” (Matt 14:13).  Perhaps the “why” questions were flowing from him to God the Father during his alone time there in the boat.

We also see Jesus begging God to take the cup of death from him in the garden of Gethsemane.  God does not.

And then we hear Jesus promising those who follow him that “Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows.  But take heart because I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). What he doesn’t promise is that he will keep us from trials and sorrows. Instead, he conveys something like, this world is not as it should be. But don’t lose courage even though things look grim. I will restore all that’s been lost. Trust me.

And that is the hardest part, to trust him when we don’t understand, when the outcome is not what we wanted. His message of comfort to us is, even if it looks like I’m not there, I am.  And even if it seems like I haven’t heard you, I have.  “And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matt 28:20).

Jesus offers similar words to the kind thief on the cross. Perhaps if Jesus would have had more breath left in him, he would have said something like, I’m not going to take you down off this cross, but I am going to die with you.  I’m going to hang here with you.  We will die together, friend.  And when we meet in paradise, I’ll explain things.

Norah died on Good Friday.  Though I did not know Norah and I do not know the “why” of Norah’s death, I have to believe our God of love was with her and spoke words of comfort to her so that she wouldn’t be afraid. I believe this because Jesus loves children and even told us we must be like them to enter his kingdom. I believe this too because David believed it and put it in a song so many years ago, “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.”

May the God of all comfort be with our community and especially with Norah’s family and close friends as we all grieve this great loss.