James Van Der Beek’s death and the path to true hope

The family of James Van Der Beek posted on Instagram an announcement that has touched millions of people:

Our beloved James Van Der Beek passed peacefully this morning. He met his final days with courage, faith, and grace. There is much to share regarding his wishes, love for humanity, and the sacredness of time. Those days will come. For now we ask for peaceful privacy as we grieve our loving husband, father, son, brother, and friend.

The actor was best known for starring in the ‘90s teen drama Dawson’s Creek. He died at age forty-eight of colorectal cancer, a disease he did not know he had until it was too late.

Former Sen. Ben Sasse made similar headlines in recent months with the announcement that he is suffering from terminal pancreatic cancer. As with Van Der Beek, he did not know about his malignancy until it was too advanced to be cured.

Sometimes people suffer from diseases they are acutely aware of. For example, my father had a heart attack at the age of thirty-four and lived with advanced heart disease for nineteen years before dying of another attack at the age of fifty-five. He and our family knew that he was living on what his doctors called “borrowed time.” Every morning, my mother would wake up and look to see if my father was alive or dead.

But often, people have diseases they do not know they have until their disease is too advanced to be cured. Accordingly, what was true for James Van der Beek and Ben Sasse could be true for me today. And for you.

Not to mention the fact that we could die today in a car accident or other calamitous event. Tomorrow is promised to none of us. The Bible therefore asks, “What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes” (James 4:14).

In the midst of our mortality, however, I encountered an encouraging word today in my personal Bible study that I felt prompted to share with you.

“A crown of beauty in the hand of the Lᴏʀᴅ”

Jesus told James and John that sitting at his right hand and left “is for those for whom it has been prepared by my Father” (Matthew 20:23). When I read this, I took note that God has already “prepared” our rewards in heaven, a fact to which Jesus referred again in his parable of the sheep and the goats: “Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world” (Matthew 25:34, my italics).

Here we see that God’s sovereign providence transcends time. As CS Lewis reminds us, if we think of time as a line on a page, God is the page. The fact that he knows in advance what we will do does not necessarily mean that he determines it. 

If I watch you eat lunch today, that does not mean that I chose your food. But divine omniscience does mean that our Father can prepare our eternal rewards in advance for present faithfulness.

Such a reward can be in this world:

• “Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lᴏʀᴅ, whose trust is in the Lᴏʀᴅ. He is like a tree planted by water, that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes, for its leaves remain green, and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit” (Jeremiah 17:7–8).
• “The righteous flourish like the palm tree and grow like a cedar in Lebanon. They are planted in the house of the Lᴏʀᴅ; they flourish in the courts of our God. They still bear fruit in old age; they are ever full of sap and green” (Psalm 92:12–14).

And such a reward will definitely be given in the next:

• “They shall be mine, says the Lᴏʀᴅ of hosts, in the day when I make up my treasured possession” (Malachi 3:17).
• “Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world” (John 17:24).
• “You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lᴏʀᴅ, and a royal diadem in the hand of your God” (Isaiah 62:3).

If your wealthy grandfather were to die

Our obedience positions us to experience God’s best, remembering that “every good and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights in whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” (James 1:17). Our Father wants to bless his children: “The Lᴏʀᴅ waits to be gracious to you, and therefore he exalts himself to show mercy to you” (Isaiah 30:18).

One way he does so is by preparing now the rewards we will receive tomorrow for faithfulness today. The certainty of such blessings is a powerful inducement to hope in the face of uncertainty, knowing that our future is as secure as the promises of God.

I had a seminary professor who illustrated such hope this way: Imagine that you are a seminary student struggling to make ends meet. (This was not difficult for most of us to envision.) One night, you sit down to a dinner of beans and weenies, which is all you can afford.

Then a knock comes at the door. A man is standing there with a telegram (this was many years ago; we could change the parable to an email or text today). It notifies us that our very wealthy grandfather is due to pass away in the next day or two and that we will inherit a large sum of money when he does.

Now, said my professor, “You sit back down to your beans and weenies, but don’t they taste a little better?”

A thought-provoking question

A fallen culture that “lies in the power of the evil one” (1 John 5:19) and is thus dominated by “the god of this world” (2 Corinthians 4:4; cf. John 12:31) is far more likely to reward sin than godliness. As I noted in today’s Daily Article, we should therefore expect to pay a high price for faithfulness to our Lord.

Conversely, an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent Father will, by virtue of his unchanging nature, reward obedience to his perfect will. The ultimate benefits of faithfulness will always outweigh its cost. We cannot measure the eternal significance of present obedience.

Here’s the catch: When we serve God so that he will reward us, we serve for the wrong reason. We enter into a transactional religion that God cannot bless because it treats him like an employer rather than our Creator and Father. But when we serve God because we love him, the consequence of such faithfulness is the experience of his best, however he determines it.

The author Randy Smith asked a thought-provoking question: “I wonder how many blessings I have missed out on in life because I have refused to obey the Lord?” The missionary Jim Elliot’s famous quote offers the positive side of his question:

“He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”

What will you give to serve Jesus today?