Rejoicing in Lament: Wrestling with Incurable Cancer and Life in Christ by J. Todd Billings

Author:J. Todd Billings [Billings, J. Todd]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: REL012010, Cancer—Religious aspects—Christianity, REL062000, Cancer—Patients—Religious life, Suffering—Religious aspects—Christianity
ISBN: 9781441222909
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2015-02-09T23:00:00+00:00

Death and dying are included—not excluded—in the story of God and the story of congregational life. Many today seek to overcome the shortcomings of the church, to improve its public relations and its popularity, to “reinvent” the church for a new day. The flaws in the church are deep and real. But in essence, the church is not the church because we believe in positive thinking, imagine a better world, or even because we believe in the importance of faith. The church is the church as a creature of God’s Word—a creature that finds its life outside of itself, that does not have faith in faith so much as faith in the God of covenant promise made known in Christ. From one standpoint, the church is a gathering of sinners who are both old and young, healthy and sick, growing and dying. But, by God’s promise, the church is also people who move through birth, health, dying, and even death on a journey to resurrection because they belong to Jesus Christ. For the end of the story of God, and of the church, is not death but resurrection. “Christ has been raised from the dead,” and the defeat of death in resurrection comes through him and then to those who belong to him. “Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ” (1 Cor. 15:20, 23).

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