One sentence of consolation that I do often offer at a funeral is this one: He is now in hands safer than ours. She is now in hands much gentler than our own. Nothing can be more consoling than to believe that our loved one is now in far safer and gentler hands than our own. But is this simple wishful thinking, whistling in the dark to keep up our courage? Fudging God’s justice to console ourselves?
Not if Jesus can be believed! Everything that Jesus reveals about God assures us that God’s hands are much gentler and safer than our own. God is the father of the prodigal son and, as we see in that parable, God is more understanding and more compassionate to us than we are too ourselves. We see too in that parable how God does not wait for us to return and apologize after we stray and betray. God runs out to meet us and doesn’t ask for an apology.
Jesus gives us too the assurance that God does not give us just one chance, but seventy-seven times seven chances, infinite chances. We don’t ruin our lives forever by making a mistake or even by making that mistake inexcusably again and again and again. Finally, in St. Paul’s farewell message to us in his Letter to the Romans, he assures us that, even though we can’t ever get our lives fully right, it doesn’t matter because in the end nothing, absolutely nothing, can separate us from God’s love and forgiveness. We are, in this life and the next, in hands far safer and gentler than our own.
God is not a God of punishment, but a God of forgiveness. God is not a God who records our sins, but a God who washes them away. God is not a God who demands perfection from us, but a God who asks for a contrite heart when we can’t measure up. God is not a God who gives us only one chance, but a God who gives us infinite chances. God is not a God who waits for us to come to our senses after we have fallen, but a God who comes searching for us, full of understanding and care. God is not a God who is calculating and parsimonious in his gifts, but a prodigal God who sows seeds everywhere without regard for waste or worthiness. God not a God who is powerless before evil and death, but a God who can raise dead bodies to life and redeem what is evil and hopeless.
Ultimately, God is not a God who cannot protect us, but is a God in whose hands and in whose promise we are far safer than when we rely upon ourselves. [Excerpt from Ron Rolheiser’s “In Safer Hands than Ours” December 2012]
