May/June 2000
Faith Through the Storm
Where is God When Tragedy Strikes?
by Richard Maffeo
Black smoke swirled through the streets. A woman's anguish echoed from flame-licked walls as her husband fell dead at her side. The soldier pulled the blood-stained sword from the man's chest and then thrust it into hers. Around the corner, soldiers ripped babies from their mothers' arms and flung the terrified infants against stone walls. Devastation swallowed Jerusalem as the Babylonian army ravaged their way through the city.
Later, as he surveyed the smoldering ruins, Jeremiah wrote, "How deserted lies the city once so full of peoplebitterly she weeps there is none to comfort herthe roads to Zion mourn" (Lamentations 1:1-4).
With grief sticking in his throat, the prophet wrote what some might describe only as ludicrous: "Because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness" (Lamentations 3:22-23).
| I don't know how they did it...but I doubt theirs was a faith born overnight in a hospital room or the cabin of a steam ship. |
Anyone looking over his shoulder would have roared: "Are you crazy? Look around you, Jeremiah! Wash the blood from the streets. Bury the children and their parents. Where is God in all this misery?"
Good question. It is one which men and women across the centuries have asked as they moved from one horror to another. I can almost hear them say it, "Don't mock my heartache with talk of God's mercy." But was Jeremiah crazy? Or did he have something which I--and perhaps you--need?
Where is God?
When a drunk driver kills a beloved husband, when divorce destroys a family, when a five year old is gunned down in a drive-by shooting, does the temptation to rail against God nearly overwhelm us? Do we shake our fists in God's face and accuse, "Where is your faithfulness?" Is it possible for an ordinary someone like you and me to face tragedy with Jeremiah-like confidence in God's unchanging faithfulness?
Horatio Spafford thought so. Early in 1871, Spafford lost his only son to illness. Four months later the Great Chicago Fire destroyed his business properties. Two years later, his wife and daughters booked passage on a ship bound for England. During the voyage the vessel collided with another ship and sank. Spafford's daughters were among those who drowned.
A few days later, he booked passage for England to join his wife. When the ship reached the vicinity of the accident, he stood on the deck and wrote these words which you might recognize:
When peace, like a river, attendeth my way;
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot,
Thou hast taught me to say,
It is well, it is well with my soul.
For more than a century, millions of hurting Christians around the world have clung to and found comfort in these words born from the bowels of heartache.
Rick Maldonado is a modern-day example of someone who trusts God in the midst of gut-wrenching loss. His son, Nicky, wasn't even eight years old when cancer smothered his young life. And yet, through their two-year-long battle with cancer, chemotherapy and radiation, Rick's confidence in God--the God who never fails--grew with each passing test, each completed treatment, each set-back. Today, three years after losing his son, Rick makes plans to serve God in a counseling ministry. How many hurting Christians will he touch with words of comfort born in the caverns of personal tragedy?
Tragedy and Heartache
I don't know how they did it. I don't know how people like Jeremiah, Spafford and thousands of others recorded in the pages
of ordinary history gave themselves over to the God who never fails--when all the evidence shouted otherwise. I don't know what their secret was, but I doubt theirs was a faith born overnight in a hospital room or the cabin of a steam ship.
In my quarter-century walk with Christ, I have grown increasingly convinced that no one is immune to heartache. Rich and poor, blue-collar and executive, young and old--personal tragedy sears everyone's path at one time or another.
Jeremiah, and those like him, have survived its devastation because long before spasms of grief swept across their lives, they had committed themselves to really knowing Christ, "and the fellowship of sharing in his suffering, becoming like him in his death" (Philippians 3:10). Through soul-rending prayer and persistent study of God's word, their faith matured beyond shallow "name-it-and-claim-it" religious slogans and philosophies. Their confidence in a loving and merciful Father sank its roots deep into eternity's soil and produced fruit much like Job's "though he slay me, yet will I trust in him" (Job 13:15, KJV).
I have a lot to learn from their example. That is why in times like the present, when my faith is not tested to its limits, I dare not take lightly Scripture's warning: "If you have raced with men on foot and they have worn you out, how can you compete with horses? If you stumble in safe country, how will you manage in the thickets by the Jordan?" (Jeremiah 12:5).
Knowing that an intimate relationship with God is nurtured through a knowledge of God's word (Romans 10:17), why would I want to spend more time in front of the television than I spend with the Scriptures? If Isaiah urged us to "seek the Lord while he may be found" (Isaiah 55:6), what sense does it make that I spend more time with the newspaper than in prayer?
Men and women of God who possess the faith to overcome such tragedies understand there is no shortcut to the spiritual maturity which is able to look at devastation and remain convinced of God's faithfulness.
That level of seasoned faith is possible only by growing increasingly more like Christ, cultivating a commitment to seek him daily in the pages of Scripture and to listen for his voice in attentive prayer. And I believe they would tell anyone yearning to strengthen their relationship with Christ, "Don't wait for the flames to lick at the walls, and don't linger until the ship sinks or the diagnosis is read, before starting the journey toward a closer walk with him."
Richard Maffeo is a registered nurse who lives with his family in San Diego. He is the author of numerous articles appearing in Christian magazines.