Another Way

“I said to the LORD, ‘You are my Lord; I have no good besides You.’ As for the saints in the land, they are the excellent ones, in whom is all my delight.” Psalm 16:2-3

When you go through something hard, it strips away the fake. Have you noticed that? The harder the thing, the less tolerance I have for the frivolous. I want to get down to the essence of life, to spend time on the things that count. I think that’s where David is when he writes this Psalm.

I’ve wrestled with “Why?”—as if knowing the answer to that question would bring some kind of healing or closure. And people will try to answer that question for you with pithy statements like, “There’s a reason for everything,” or “Just trust God.” But when it’s your baby—when your baby hurts, when you’re left with empty wombs and empty arms, those nice sayings just don’t cut it.

But, God is grace and He is good. When I couldn’t see Him clearly, when I was broken, He grabbed me not-so-subtly and showed me that He is Father.

The idea of inheritance, by definition, starts with the idea of family. Like many other places in the Bible, Psalm 16 draws a line between the people of God and those who seek other gods (verses 3-4).

The people of God, or the saints in the land, are not the perfect people. They are simply those who put their faith in God.

In verse 2, David writes, “I said to the LORD, ‘You are my Lord.’” The all-caps “LORD” means Yahweh. As God tells Moses in Exodus 3, Yahweh means “I am who I am.” He is the God of creation, the God who not only knows the future, but is in the past, present, and future all at once. “Lord” with the lowercase letters is translated from the Hebrew word “Adon,” which means master. So, David is placing himself squarely under the protection of Yahweh, the God of Abraham and Moses. And David is called a son of God.

Scripture talks about heirs of God from Genesis through Revelation. Before we turn two pages in the Bible, Adam and Eve take the bite that breaks the world, and the inheritance they pass to their offspring is death. But, God builds a path to life in the midst of all that brokenness. Abraham is named heir of God’s Promised Land, a physical place. In Exodus, God says to Pharaoh, “Let my firstborn son go.” So, as the Old Testament story goes, Israel is the beloved child of God. They screw up and forget God, but Father God is always, always there with grace to bestow.

In the baptismal waters at the start of his ministry, Jesus is declared God’s son in whom He takes great delight. And we believers are called sons and daughters of Yahweh Himself.

Our view of God when we suffer is sometimes that God is mean, distant, and doesn’t care. Because we are of the offspring of Adam, we inherit death and brokenness in our hearts as well as in the world. And Satan wants destruction and bitterness to take root.

But, if we believe, we are daughters of God. There is another way, another family. There is another way for your heart to be, even in the midst of the worst grief the world has to offer a mama.

The believer’s inheritance underscores the dignity of a family relationship. God is Father, and He’s a good one. If we take a look at the words He has for us, we get a sense of the protective, redeeming nature of our Father God.

In Isaiah 43:1-7, He speaks directly to us. The passage starts with creation language: “Now this is what the LORD says—the One who created you, Jacob, the One who formed you, Israel.” We are not owned by Him; we are made by Him. We are His work, His daughters, and He cares what happens to us.

It starts with covenantal language: “Do not fear for I have redeemed you; I have called you by your name; You are Mine.” Our God is power, and we are called His people.

When the grief wells up, when the heartache threatens to drown, He is there. He is the God who calms storms and tells the shores where to hold in the oceans. Because He is with us, we will not be overwhelmed.

When the pain burns like fire, when hurt comes at unexpected moments to scorch your heart, He is there. He is the God who showed Himself to Moses through a fire that didn’t destroy; He is the God who saves from the fiery furnace. Because He is with us, the pain has no power to demolish us.

Isn’t it true, however, that our tendency as humans is to drift like the prodigal son? We take the inheritance, the things that God has given, and we take it for granted. We take Him for granted.

Suffering has a way of making us turn around, of forcing us to shed our pride and tentatively come back to God, not really knowing if He will receive us after all we’ve done, all we’ve doubted.

BUT, GRACE.

Through death on the cross, Jesus allowed us to be adopted into the family of God (Romans 4:12-15, 8:15-17). When we choose Christ, we choose another way, a better way. We are irrevocably, everlastingly His. Like God did with Jacob, he grabs us and turns us to Him. As daughters of God, we inherit life and renewal. Life and renewal are ours forever in heaven, and life and renewal are ours to have now.

“Life was in Him, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, yet the darkness did not overcome it.” John 1:5

Shannon Owen lives in Houston, Texas with her husband, Lee, and their two girls, Avery (6) and Kate (2). In 2012, between her two girls, she miscarried a baby at 8 weeks due to an ectopic pregnancy; read more from Shannon about her Hope Baby here. She taught high school English, but traded in her grammar textbooks for board books after Avery was born. However, words and stories are still very much a part of her life. 

During a lengthy NICU stay after her daughter Kate was born, Shannon dusted off her pen and started a blog to keep friends and family updated on Kate’s progress, but kept writing because it was catharsis. Kate was born with a congenital, non-progressive muscle and joint disorder as well as bilateral vocal cord paralysis, which causes a blockage in her airway. Shannon also writes for Abide, an audio prayer app, and has had some of her reading plans featured on YouVersion. You can find her at shannonowenblogs.com. Shannon and her family are very involved in their church, Houston’s First Baptist. Shannon and Lee help teach high school juniors and seniors, and Shannon leads and teaches in the women’s ministry.

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