The following is a funeral meditation given by John Piper for a member of Bethlehem Baptist Church who committed suicide in 1981. Identifying information has been removed.

I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth. And if I am right and there is an all-powerful, all-wise God who made the universe, holds it in existence, and guides it to a great climax, then at least one thing is sure: there will be strangeness and mystery in the world beyond our finite little comprehension. There is no reason to think that God should run the world according to our expectations.

He is infinite; we are finite.
He knows everything that can be known; we forget our own telephone number.
He is strong enough to wield galaxies and never sleeps; we tire at a few hours’ labor and spend 1/3 of our lives unconscious in sleep.
He is more glorious than all the Northern Lights and the Milky Way and the Grand Canyon; but we have to use make-up and hairdos and shiny shoes.

The Mystery of God’s Purposes

There is such an infinite difference between God and us that one thing is sure: the way he runs the world will often puzzle us.

O, the depth of the riches and the wisdom and the knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways. For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor? (Romans 11:33–34)

The Revelation of God’s Purposes

But God has not left us in total ignorance. He has revealed some of his purposes in his Son, Jesus, and in his Word, the Bible. The broad and large and final purposes of God are made clear. But God has left us to trust him in the strange ways in which he goes about achieving his final purposes.

The Apostle Paul

One of the strangest stories in the Bible is the story about the great apostle Paul who wrote almost half the books in the New Testament. Paul in his full years was a great man, greater than any of us.

He was great in faith. He said, “I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed” (2 Timothy 1:12). He saw every one of the crushing circumstances that entered his life as another motive to rely more on God and less on himself (2 Corinthians 1:9).

Paul was also great in love. O, how he loved his churches and poured out his life not just for his own pleasure, but for the eternal good of his people. He could be severe with powerful words, or he could be tender like a nurse taking care of her children (1 Thessalonians 1:7; 2 Corinthians 7:8). But whatever he did, and whatever he said, he aimed at the “joy of their faith” (2 Corinthians 1:24). He loved them and would have given his life for them (Romans 9:2).

And Paul was great in wisdom. St. Peter said that all Paul’s writings were the product of God-given wisdom (2 Peter 2:15). And Paul himself had to admit that God had blessed him with insights into divine truth which no one else yet knew (1 Corinthians 2:10–13). There is nothing more profound in all the writings of mankind than Paul’s letter to the Romans. He was great in wisdom.

And lastly, he was great in freedom. His rallying cry was: “For freedom Christ has set us free” (Galatians 5:1). He enjoyed freedom from guilt because he trusted wholly in Christ’s forgiveness which he purchased on the cross; freedom from fear and hopelessness because he believed the promises of God and kept his eye on God’s mercy; freedom from enslaving sinful habits: he said, “All things are lawful for me, but I will not be enslaved by any” (1 Corinthians 6:12). He was a free man, even in jail.