It’s Sunday night. How you feeling about the week ahead?

The past seven days have been tragic in our community, with multiple unexpected deaths, a church scandal, sexual abuse, a hit-and-run death - and those are just the headlines.

At the same time, I’ve been recovering from knee replacement surgery for the last week-and-a-half, which is no picnic, but thankfully not tragic. I’ve had time to watch a couple of interviews that just came out with former U.S. Senator Ben Sasse, who was diagnosed a couple of months ago with stage four pancreatic cancer that has metastasized to several organs. He’s 53 years old with 22- and 24-year old daughters and a 14-year old son. He was given 90 days to live, and is now in a clinical trial that could extend his life up to a year.

Sasse is a unique blend of political wisdom, theological depth, a little craziness, and a lot of down-to-earth common sense and likability.

I’ll link the interviews below, but there’s one clip that’s especially relevant in light of this week. Sasse talks about how his impending death takes away his ability to think of anything he has done as righteous. All our works are foolish, and our salvation is only accomplished because Jesus did everything on the cross to fulfill the law.

Not only does Jesus take our sin, he gives us his righteousness so God looks at us as his children, as if we had never sinned, and he sweeps us up to one day sit in the heavenly places with him.

And Sasse says all this with deep joy even through tears.

To tie this back to tragedy and suffering and disease and death:

None of us have the ultimate answers for the kinds of events our community has experienced this week, or for the kind of diagnosis Sasse got. The world was not designed to be this way, and sin has left it marred and broken.

What we can say is that God is God, and we are not. We don’t know why these things happened. We do know that God has proven his love for us in Jesus, so we can anchor all of our pain and questions and tears in the heart of a God who has saved us, is saving us, and will save us completely.

In the meantime, these sufferings are preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, a glory we will celebrate forever as sons and daughters at the great unending feast of the lamb.

Come, Lord Jesus.

Grace and peace to you in the week ahead.