God’s Love is Better Than Life
By Louise Maynor
“Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you.” (Ps. 63: 3)
For the last two months, I and my family have been in a wilderness of illness, pain, and loss. We have had to stand still and wait on the Lord. My dear sister has groaned and moaned for seven weeks with the pain of COPD, a groping struggle for breath. We had no earlier awareness of her illness and neither did she. This last stage was terrifying for her, but we prayed every moment for her comfort. There must be no pain like the anxiety of searching for life-saving breath. God gave Sally comfort before dawn on March 8. From the time of her hospitalization, Sally accepted the fact that she would die, but she never stopped moaning for help. A few hours before her death, she seemed to murmur, “help me.”
As we move into the Third Sunday in Lent, the Scriptures continue the focus on the wilderness experience. Upon first reading the passages, I was baffled by how different they seemed. In Psalm 63, David is involved in an intimate struggle with God, seeking solace in the parched, barren desert of Judah. Amidst the severe thirst, hunger, heat and cold of that isolation, David cries out, “Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you.”
In Daniel 3, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are almost mythical characters in an epic drama. In the most dire, death-defying circumstances, they stand firm, displaying an unwavering faith in God. Nebuchadnezzar orders the most horrific form of capital punishment in his power (a fiery death in a blazing furnace) on the three followers of God because they go against his own imperial dictates. God tests the three believers, secures them from harm, and delivers them. Nebuchadnezzar’s heart is changed. Ultimately, Nebuchadnezzar decrees that “there is no other God who is able to deliver this way.”
Revelation 2: 8-11 recalls that the church at Smyrna suffered persecution and possible imprisonment for their belief in a Christian God. Even in the face of this suffering, they are instructed to “Be faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of life.”
The scenes in these passages change from the intimately personal to political to the religious contexts of each experience. What does it all mean? Simply stated, it shows that God’s mercy is infinite. He saves those who are faithful to Him. He redeems us, and we inherit eternal life in the end.
My entire family has shared Sally’s wilderness of impending death. I don’t know what her conversations with God might have been, but I am consoled that she lived a life of simple, enduring faith, generosity, and love of God and her family. In our questioning, we repeat David’s words, “Because your love is better than life, (our) lips will glorify you.” We are challenged to wait for the prize, to seek God more closely in our personal lives, to exhibit our faith for the world to see, and to receive the reward that awaits us.
