WHAM! Facing Life's Heavy Hits

By Bill Bagents and Laura S Bagents

Because life includes major blows to heart, head, health, faith, finances, and relationships, WHAM! Facing Life's Heavy Hits: Thirteen New Testament Encounters offers a fresh and focused look at 13 familiar stories and lives. WHAM! invites exploration of ways the journeys of Zechariah and Elizabeth, Mary, John the Baptizer, the

• Language: English
• Publisher: Heritage Christian University Press
• Release date: Sep 8, 2022
• ISBN: 9781956811308

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

Those of you who have read Wham! Facing Life’s Heavy Hits: Thirteen Old Testament Encounters will find this introduction familiar. We repeat our foundational concepts because we want this New Testament volume to make sense as a stand-alone book.

From the creation, all that God made was good and very good (Gen 1:16, 31). But that didn’t last long. As Genesis 3:1 implies, there had already been a spiritual disturbance—opposition to God existed even before humans sinned. Human sin just made evil more obvious and more personal. It also made human life more fragile and more challenging (Gen 3:16–19). It opened the door to life’s whams, including both the consequences of sin and what Shakespeare poetically described as the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

Just as God’s blessings of sun, rain, and the beauties of nature bless both the evil and the just, the whams of life on a sin-damaged planet afflict everyone (Eccl 3:17–20). Sometimes personal sin is the cause, but often it’s the sin of others that harms the innocent. Sometimes sin is causative only in the broadest of senses; it put people out of God’s paradise and away from the protection of His overruling presence. Our earliest ancestors insisted on a degree of freedom from God, and their decision has cost us ever since. Some whams are foreseeable and preventable. Others come ambush-style, with neither warning nor recourse. They happen due to no fault of our own. Sometimes they happen without any hint of a reason.

We need to be careful with the phrase with neither warning nor recourse. That statement isn’t absolute. Scripture describes innumerable heavy hits afflicting people, both godly and not.  Scripture warns us about the dangers, fragility, and uncertainties of life. And it offers more than just warning. It offers instruction and hope. No one helps us more than God in our hardest moments. And no one can match God’s power to turn human struggles into spiritual victories—victories that help us love Him more as they equip us to bless our fellow strugglers.

We don’t love the whams; we’re not supposed to. But in our best moments, we can love what God does to us and through us as He helps us heal and learn.

Whams need not be joy-ending. They need not be life-defining. Some can be overcome, at least to a degree. Some we must incorporate into our story and service and endure until we reach the whamless and perfect peace of God. That’s one of the greatest gifts of God: In Christ no blow, no matter how severe, will be allowed to harm us forever. Even in this life, it will not be allowed to harm us without purpose and meaning (Rom 8:28).

This book engages familiar New Testament stories through a narrow lens. For most of the stories, several life-altering whams will be listed, but the lens is a focus on one category of challenge or crisis. While we invite you to explore as broadly as you wish, we purposefully restrict our view for the sake of emphasis and practicality. We didn’t want to create a 600-page book that would never be read. If the book were to be used in a Bible class setting, we wanted it to be reasonable for a one-quarter study. We tried to heed the paradoxical principle that less is sometimes more.

Disclaimer from Bill: I tend to battle most challenges with a degree of humor. For some readers, one or more of the life blows described in this book will be too recent and too traumatic for even the slightest levity to be appropriate. To you, I sincerely apologize. At any point you need to stop reading, bless yourself by doing just that. If it’s ever right to resume, you will. Please know that I dare not make light of your pain. At the same time, please know that we want you to see God’s light even through the darkest of pain.

WHAM 1: ZECHARIAH AND ELIZABETH

BLESSINGS OFTEN COME WITH COMPLICATIONS

THE STORY

Only Luke records the bittersweet story of Zechariah and Elizabeth, beginning with the sweetest set of compliments. And they were both righteous before God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and statutes of the Lord (Luke 1:6). We see their lives as spiritually rich in God’s service, but something is missing: But they had no child because Elizabeth was barren, and both were advanced in years (Luke 1:7). What a statement within Scripture! From a literary perspective, it’s foreshadowing. There’s a reason for this disclosure; something’s about to change. From a biblical perspective, Elizabeth stands in a long line of once-childless ladies including Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, Samson’s mother, and Hannah (Gen 15:3–4, 16:1, 25:21, 30:1–4, Judg 13:2–3, 1 Sam 1:5).

An angel appeared to Zechariah with wonderful news.

Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard, and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John. And you will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, for he will be great before the Lord. (Luke 1:13–15a)" 

When Zechariah expressed doubt over this prophecy, he was made mute until the day that he named his son (Luke 1:18–20). In due time—despite questions from their neighbors and relatives—Elizabeth stood by her husband and named the baby John (Luke 1:57–63). Zechariah’s speech was restored, and he offered a sweet prophecy of honor and thanksgiving (Luke 1:67–79). That prophecy is the last we hear from Zechariah or Elizabeth in Scripture, though we hear much from and about their son.

THE WHAMS

Luke 1:7 doesn’t disclose the source of Elizabeth’s barrenness. To borrow the language of 1 Samuel 1:5–6, had the Lord closed her womb? If so, was this by providence or divine design? We don’t know. The joy promised in Luke 1:14 and the wording of Luke 1:25—Thus the Lord has done for me in the days when he looked on me, to take away my reproach among people—confirm that in their culture, childlessness was seen as both a burden and a loss. It may even have been viewed as a curse or judgment from God. Their long married life without children was a major blow.

The emphasis of this chapter—blessings often come with complications—is made clear by a series of whams. Regarding the angel’s appearance, Zechariah was troubled when he saw him, and fear fell upon him (Luke 1:12). After a less-than-stellar response, he spent months being unable to speak. Even in