The once adoring crowds have raced for the exits - John 6:66 tells us, “After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him” - Jesus says to his disciples, “Do you want to go away as well?” (John 6:67). There Jesus has just scared off a large crowd with some of his most controversial and misunderstood teaching in all the Gospels. It brings to mind Peter’s great declaration of allegiance to Jesus in John 6. My desire to have this pain removed, or this loss restored, must not eclipse my desire for the God who is powerful enough to remove it, or restore it, but is loving me in a way that is greater than I can understand. But such a supernaturally inspired declaration of allegiance to God does say, that though this pain may be great, God is greater. It’s Job 13:15, where Job, in the midst of such great sufferings, makes this beautiful statement of allegiance to God: “Though he slay me, I will hope in him.” It doesn’t mean the pain is any less it doesn’t mean the hurt isn’t real. It is a supernatural thing - an evidence of the Holy Spirit at work - when praise rises up in us in the midst of our greatest pains. It was “the most painful room,” says Barnard, “but there was so much joy” as they turned their hearts together to worship in the hardest moment of their lives - which became the inspiration for the song “Though You Slay Me.”

As Barnard held his mother to comfort her, he says, as she wailed, she sang softly underneath her breath, the words of Job 1:21: He gives, he takes, blessed be the name of the Lord.īarnard says it was a beautiful cry, not only in her tone and pitch, but in her expressing, while in the tide of wave after waves of pain and loss, her deep trust in God. Barnard’s mother wasn’t able to stand and began hyperventilating, so great was the pain and loss. When the doctor informed Barnard and his mother that his father had died, the flood of pain and shock came. But even more often, he gives us something even more supernatural: praise.įor Shane Barnard, it came in the hospital room at the passing of his father. We cry out for healing or relief or some circumstantial change. In the very midst of life’s deepest pains and most gut-wrenching losses, God loves to gives us a strange, but wonderful gift.

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