Another act of terrorism on American soil.
I know it’s only September’s end, but it’s felt like a very long year. If we’ve paid any attention to the world around us, and consumed any headlines or social media, we’ve been pummeled by a tsunami of visual carnage. We’ve been subjected to the videos of moral and societal chaos. We’ve been overwhelmed by the spiritual and cultural darkness. With horror, we’ve watched the unfolding of national tragedies and been haunted by their lingering aftermath. We’ve been shaken, and saddened, by the cries of sorrow on the lips of our fellow image bearers. After all, they bear God’s image – the unique image of our Creator.
Some days it feels like too much, friends. And our souls feel weakened by it all.
No stranger to suffering, Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809 – 1892), perhaps the greatest poet of the British Victorian age, composed a long elegiac poem which he titled “In Memoriam.” Tennyson penned the words over a 17-year period of his own struggle to understand a fallen world, as he tried to cope with the tragic death of Arthur Henry Hallam, his best friend from Cambridge and his sister’s fiancé.
As a pastor, if you were to ask me what is the number-one reason why people struggle to maintain their Christian faith, I would answer: the problem of evil. People don’t know how to process all the pain and suffering in the world – including their own. Theologians call this “theodicy,” from the Greek words for “God” and “justice.” Expressed as a succinct question: How could a powerful and good God let this happen?
Included in Tennyson’s larger poem are the words of “Ring Out, Wild Bells.” Published in 1850, the shorter poem expresses the sentiment of a classic New Year’s Eve. It’s raw with gut-level, human emotion. Tennyson reminds us of the universal longings of the human heart, which are – more than a century and a half later – surprisingly unchanged.
I know it’s not time for New Year’s reflections, but my heavy heart today leads me there …
“Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.
Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.
Ring out the grief that saps the mind
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.
Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.”
How do we wrestle with the deep division in our land, and with the violence, pain, and sorrow which seem to be ramping up – when we know that there’s a God in heaven who could stop it all in one second? “How long, O Lord?” “How long?” This real-life question echoes in the Scriptures (Psalm 13:1-2; Habakkuk 1:2; Revelation 6:10). It seems that, in whatever era we live, God’s people must face these predicaments. Pain can drive us away from God. That’s clear. But, pain can also drive us to God. When it comes to knowing God’s faithfulness, our personal pain helps us separate fact from fiction. “Ring out the false, ring in the true.”
You see, friend, theodicy can remain an abstract concept relegated to some irrelevant place on a bookshelf, or it can be the very real dilemma that causes us to know how desperately we need a God who transcends every unknown in this life. C.S. Lewis expressed it like this: “We can ignore even pleasure. But pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”
Pain is God’s megaphone. As the year 2025 “is dying in the night” all around us, we – like both the poet and the philosopher wading through their deep grief – can be transparent with God about our own confusion, pain, and uncertainty. They’re part of life on this fallen planet, and here we are. Instead of quietly wallowing in our anxieties related to God’s providence and grace, we can go straight to our Creator every time our questions seem unanswerable. This is the direct access to the throne of God (Hebrews 4:14-16) which Christ has provided for us!
“Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes
But ring the fuller minstrel in.
Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.
Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.
Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.”
“Grief … strife … sin … false pride … slander … spite … wars … They’re all in Tennyson’s poem, and they all contribute to what he calls “the darkness of the land.” For us, it may not be the perfect plan of God that the pervasive spiritual, moral, and cultural chaos dissipates overnight. The fog may endure. The resolutions may not come quickly. But – because of an empty tomb – you and I can find peace and faith in the fog.
The most famous words of “In Memoriam” are these: “‘Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” I’m here to tell you that the one who loved and lost is Jesus. When our Lord wept at the grave of Lazarus, He showed us everything we need to know. The only one who knew that Lazarus would soon be alive and well chose to enter into our human condition and feel our every pain. Soon Christ would go to the cross for you and for me: naked, bloodied, and alone. Jesus loved us until the end, and then He made the end the beginning! By coming to this world as our perfect sacrifice, Christ was willing to lose Himself – to lay aside His own glory – for our salvation and eternal life with Him.
So when there are things about this broken world that I can’t figure out or reconcile – including my own sorrow – I can still find rest where the greatest injustice became the greatest hope. “Ring out the old, ring in the new!”
Friend, your hope is there too. In Christ, you and I have been loved with the greatest of loves. The wildest of loves.
Ring those bells!
Pastor Charles
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