This has been the worst month of my life.
We've just lost our daughter. Nothing in life can prepare you
for a moment like this. And while you're still
processing everything that's just happened, there are many
arrangements that have to be planned.
One big question is where do we lay Anna's shell?
I say shell because the real Anna Grace Kirby is safe in the
everlasting arms of Jesus. So here we are.
Me and my wife Emma in the space of a few days found ourselves.
I was travelling from town to town trying to find the right
site to Layana. But you want to see something
beautiful. Pretty much everywhere we went,
God kept blessing us with this beautiful flower.
The snowdrops are one of the earliest flowers to appear after
the cold British winter. But OK, where am I going with
this? Well, snowdrops are just like
you, and they're just like me. If you've ever done any
gardening before, you'll have come across what we call a bulb.
Bulbs go into the ground where they lie dormant.
On the surface, it looks like those snowdrops are finished.
There's no life in them. They've had their time, and now
they are gone forever. But when the sun shines on them,
even if there's a cold frost, even if there's snow on the
ground, these snowdrops eventually return.
Those bulbs which were out of sight, out of mind, they will
one day produce flowers again when it is due season.
And you know something? This has really made me think
because our world is full of bulbs.
It's full of Christians who were once part of the land of the
living, who once walked on earth, but their shell has been
put into the ground. However, when Christ returns,
all those believers will flower again.
They will be resurrected to eternal life with Christ.
The Bible says in Romans 8 verse 11.
But if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead
dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also
give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in
you. Listen to this poem.
It was written on one of the memorial stones that caught my
eye as we were searching for somewhere to lay.
Anna, where are the snowdrops, Said the sun dead, said the
frost buried and lost everyone. A foolish answer, said the sun.
They did not die asleep. They lie, everyone, and I will
awake them. I the sun into the light, or
clad in white everyone. Oh my dear friend, if you are
trusting in Christ as your Lord and Savior, when you die and
when you are laid in the ground, the world may say your time is
up. They will say you will never
come back. But it's all the Son of God has
to do is shine His resurrection light on you, and you will rise
again. Why?
Because He Himself is like a bulb that was laid in the
ground, dead, forgotten. But on the third day he rose
again, like a beautiful flower blooming in the spring.
The Lord Jesus Christ came back again.
Now may I ask you a personal question?
Are you grieving right now? Are you going through a
difficult season of life? If you are, where is the first
place in the Bible that you turn?
As you can imagine, my wife felt the loss of Anna in a much more
intense way than I could ever feel.
She carried Anna, she gave birth to her.
So where did Emma turn during this trial?
She went to the book of Job. Some people listening, I have no
doubts have gone through a lot, but I doubt there's anyone who's
experienced quite the same amount as this godly man Job in
the Bible. In one day he lost all of his
wealth, all ten of his children, all of his reputation, and even
his wife turned on him and said curse the God that you love and
die. So after all this, how do you
think the scripture announces such a terrible ordeal?
Job one, verse 3 simply says, and there was a day.
I wonder how many of those days you've had.
Perhaps you can say there was a day a doctor gave me the news
that I didn't want to hear. Maybe you could say there was a
day my boss told me that I was losing my job.
There was a day I found out that the one person I trusted with
everything decided to walk out of my life.
Come on guys, be honest with me. We've all had those days.
I remember when I was 15 there was a day I got jumped and my
friends just watched and did nothing.
I remember there was a day when I was supposed to get my GCSE
exam results but instead a doctor told me that I needed to
stay in hospital because I needed to have urgent heart
surgery. I'll never forget that day.
There was a day when me and Emma put all of our life savings into
buying a house only to lose everything because there was one
huge flaw that the house was hiding and that the surveyor had
totally missed. Then there was a day when my
wife gave birth to our little girl who was born sleeping.
I'm going to choose my words carefully.
But as heartbreaking as those days are in your life and in
mine, they are needful. You see the unbeliever, they
look at the Christian during a crisis and they say, what kind
of a God do you serve? How does this God who says he
loves you, how can he do this to his own children?
How Can you believe such a God like this exists?
What kind of a reward is that for you after all those years of
faithful service? And yet for the Christian during
the crisis, the Christian he has never known.
Sweeter fellow fellowship with their God.
And even though this trial, it sends shivers down their spine,
they've never known anything like this.
In one sense, they don't want to leave the trial because the Lord
God is so close to them. When I sent my newsletter out
explaining what happened to us this month, a precious brother
in Christ emailed me with a quote from Charles Spurgeon.
Spurgeon once said those who dive in the sea of affliction
bring up rare pearls. May I go deeper?
Do you know how an oyster forms a Pearl?
It starts from a crisis. In that little oysters world,
what happens is a grain of sand or an unwanted material enters
into the oysters soft mantle and so it creates discomfort as a
response. The oyster secrets an organic
protein which coats this foreign material, this irritant in its
own smooth and shiny coating. And after many, many years of
doing in this process over and over, of many, many years of
having this discomfort, this crisis, if you like, eventually
a beautiful Pearl is formed. Am I talking to anyone here
today? Can you testify of the goodness
of God despite the fact that He allowed you to walk through
these dark times? Sorry, I shouldn't have said
that. OK.
No, He doesn't allow us to walk through those dark times because
very often we don't walk through them.
The Lord God carries us through them.
But after many, many years that you've had of trouble, your life
has been filled with sorrow. Can you still say that you love
God? I'm sure you can.
You see, these crises that we all go through teach us so many
important lessons. And at the end of it, you've
probably become a better Christian, haven't you?
Even though at the time you couldn't see, you couldn't
understand, you couldn't fathom why God would bring this into
your life. But now you can see a wiser man
than me put it like this. God's Providence is like Hebrew.
It can only be understood when you read it backwards.
And to quote our friend Charles Spurgeon again, he said, I have
learned to kiss the waves that throw me up against the Rock of
Ages. So I don't know what you're
going through right now, but I just want to say stay close to
the Lord. Don't ask the question.
Why? Why?
Why have you done this to me, God?
Because very often that gets us absolutely no word.
Instead, try asking this question, Lord God, what are you
trying to teach me through this trial?
And if you remember one thing about Job, remember this Job
said, shall we indeed only accept good from God?
Shall we not accept adversity? You see, the very hand that
feeds you every day is God's hand.
He feeds you, doesn't He? Well, that same hand sometimes
brings a trial, a trouble. And may we, in that time of
trouble, hold on to that hand that has given us that trial.
May we hold on to the everlasting arms of God because
only He can hold us up. OK, now I do just want to say I
am sorry if this is the first time you're hearing about our
news. I did make a community post
explaining all about what had happened to us and about our
precious little girl Anna. Grace and I did also make a
detailed video 6 days, just six days after we lost her.
But I was so emotional in the video and we just felt it was it
was too much personal details that we didn't really want it to
go out across all of the Internet.
So just for now, we've decided to sit on it and not release it.
However, I do actually have a few more things I would like to
share with a smaller audience with our readers on our
newsletter. So if you are someone who does
pray for us and does truly care about our gospel work, well,
please do sign up to our newsletter.
We'd like to share it with particularly our Off the Curb
family. You can sign up on Off the
curb.co.uk. And then there is something else
I probably should mention. As you can probably tell, this
video is very different from my usual content as it was made
primarily for Christians. As you know, I usually try and
make evangelist videos that are for both non Christians and
Christians alike. But just for a little while, I
believe the Lord God wants me to preach some more messages like
this just while we mourn over Anna, because there are some
particular things I believe that He alone has laid on my heart
during this time. But if for any reason you are
listening to this and you're not yet a Christian, or you're
unsure about where you're going when you die, would you do a
favour for me? Would you just click this video
and listen very carefully?