When bad things happen

First off, what is “bad”……Bad is something that makes me unhappy right now. If you ask a child who has just received his DPT shot to describe it, he would say it was a bad thing. He is not necessarily wrong. He is just speaking from a limited, short term, perspective.

Bad things happen. They happen all of the time. They happen to good people. I can’t justify them. I can’t always assign blame for them. It’s not fair. I can’t control them. All I can control is my reaction to them.

The most important outcome when bad things happen to me, and to you, is that the feelings that follow can crowd out the love that we need to give to God and others.

In the worst case, our natural and normal love can turn into anger. Anger at the people we should be loving is sad. Anger at God is a tragedy. It is a tragedy because it is purely self destructive. Do you think that your anger with God does him any real harm? It certainly harms you. Vengeance against the creator of the universe is self defeating………even if you are right……. and you aren’t.

I have struggled with the book of Job for a long time. Job was a good man, certainly better than me. God turned Satan loose on him and this wrecked Job’s life. What follows is about 40 chapters where Job and his friends try unsuccessfully to explain. Then, there is a conversation between Job and God. The gist of it is: “God is big and we are tiny. Things are going to happen that we will never understand.” Some of them will be good and some will be unspeakably bad. I believe that God has a purpose behind it all. Just like the kid’s DPT shot, the bad things serve a greater purpose that is beyond our immediate understanding. We need to be patient in our pain and this is very hard. In our pain we have to fall back on rules #1 & 2…….

LOVE GOD…….. LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR.

My oldest son Ryan lived a life that was rough. He spent many years in various forms of rebellion. Then he turned his life around. He had a daughter, he got baptised, he turned the corner……..and a few months later he died. How could God do this to Ryan? How could God do this to ME? I don’t understand any more than Job did………any more than the kid leaving the doctor’s office.

I believe that God has a plan that is larger than what I can understand. Maybe, there was something waiting for Ryan that God wanted to spare him from. Maybe God said, “Today, Ryan is mine. Tomorrow he may not be”. I believe that someday Ryan and I will sit down in paradise over a cup of coffee and that we will both understand. I bet that the coffee will be fabulous.

When bad things happen, we often ask the wrong question. We ask “Where did this bad thing come from?” Instead we should ask “Where is this bad thing going?” I believe that God is at work, even in the bad times, and that my current “bad thing” is working toward something good…………..even if I can’t see it or understand it from where I’m standing right now.

I have to believe that God knows what he is doing.

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