Finding Meaning (Romans 11)

In Romans 11, we see Paul wrestling with one of the great tragedies of his life. His people had rejected him and rejected Jesus, but Paul found meaning in that loss.

God was able to use Israel’s transgression, their rejection of Jesus, to bring the rest of the world to faith. It’s almost as if the rest of the nations were watching Israel from the sidelines, and Israel, play after play, kept stumbling, kept going backwards, kept fumbling the ball. And as Israel stumbled, the rest of us were learning.  

Learning that we cannot be perfectly faithful but that God is still faithful. How did we learn this? By watching Israel try and fail, over and over again. Though it broke Paul’s heart, he found meaning in that loss because it led him to tell everyone else about Jesus.

Paul didn’t get stuck in grief, he believed that God would turn tragedy into triumph. We, too, experience grief and the danger is that we’ll get stuck in our grief. If you’ve been in the deep waters of grief, if you’re sinking down or at the bottom even right now, our hope is that we trust that God is present to us as we grieve, that God is moving even in the loss, that God is transforming even the tragedy, and that God can take the ashes and make something beautiful.