Tragedies...Where are you God?

Verse of the Week:

In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.  These have come so that your faith-of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire- may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory, and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. (1 Peter 1:6-7)

Tragedies...Where are you God?

Why God? Why?  I had just received tragic news via text that one of my friends had lost her baby boy. Later she asked her friends to pray that God's glory be revealed in this situation.  So I began to pray for exactly that, but while praying for her throughout the week, a new question formed in my mind: How is God's glory ever shown in such awful tragedies?  How is His glory shown when a couple who wants kids keep having miscarriages, or when a family who was so excited about having a girl lost their daughter at birth, or when a husband and wife who want to have kids cannot conceive. As I pondered the question, I began to remember one of my favorite heros of all times, Corrie Ten Boom.  Corrie was sent to a concentration camp during World War II for hiding Jews in her home. There in the camp she encountered senseless tragedies and watched numbers upon numbers of people die.  She saw an evil in that camp that no living human being should ever see.

One day when I was younger I remember watching Corrie on TV talking about her experiences in the camp. She said something that I will never forget,

 "There is no pit so deep, that He is not deeper still."

There is no tragedy so awful that God is not present in it all. His glory can still be seen in the worst of worst times and in the darkest hour. "How?"  I asked and prayed, "How can God's glory be seen when there is nothing but evil present?" Then God brought a verse to my mind from the book of 1 John.

This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only son into the world that we might live through him.  [...] No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. (1 John 4:9, 12)

God's glory is revealed through people and their love for one another. People see Christ through the lives of other people. God's glory is in his followers, and He is made known through they way that they respond to situations in their lives.

No matter how deep Corrie's pit was, God was still there, evident through the life of Corrie and her sister Betsy in that concentration camp.  Together the sisters were able to share the gospel and provide comfort and love to countless women even in the darkest of times.  In the worst of the worst, Christ was there in the life of his followers.

Another scripture comes to mind...

In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.  These have come so that your faith-of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire- may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory, and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. (1 Peter 1:6-7)

When Christians face senseless tragedies and trials, they have a chance to show their faith, though refined by fire, is genuine and real. And when they show the world Christ in the darkest of situations, Christ's glory is revealed.

I used to think that at the end of verse 7, when it talks about Christ being revealed, that it meant when Christ returns to this earth, but then I realized that it goes much deeper than that. Christ is revealed through the lives of those who love Him, whose deep faith sets them apart from a world who has no hope without Christ.

I look at that couple I was praying for, and realized something.  God's glory is indeed being shown in this awful tragedy.  His glory is being shown in that baby boy's parents who have shown such a deep faith and trust in God in the midst of it all.  Their attitude in the midst of it all has indeed glorified God. Instead of drowning in a sea of bitterness and hatred, they have risen above it all and continued living life full of hope and love because they know who holds that sweet boy in the palm of His hands.

I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. (Romans 8:18)

Thank you Lord for showing me where your glory is truly shown.