“In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”
–Aeschylus, ancient Greek tragedian

Years ago, when I subscribed to Sports Illustrated, my favorite page was the last, where sportswriter Rick Reilly wrote a back-page column. Rick’s way with words and stories was compelling reading. Once, he wrote of an Arizona high school kid, Joe Kay–seemingly the All-American boy. Of his many talents, basketball was one.

Joe scored the winning points against his school’s archrival with a crowd-mesmerizing monster dunk. Pandemonium erupted. Joe was swamped, and ended up on the bottom of a human mass of celebration. His neck twisted and he suffered a sports-ending stroke. His academic scholarship to Stanford was put on hold.

Folks tried to make Joe and his family feel better. When people are suffering, sometimes folks say mindless things. When a friend told Mrs. Kay, “God must’ve had a plan for Joe,” she replied, “That’s bull. God had nothing to do with this . . . I have no interest in a God who would do that to my son.”

And I say, “Amen.”

Theodicy is the study of, and questioning of, God’s goodness in a world where evil and pain are prevalent. It’s one of the atheists’ greatest points in their argument for the non-existence of God.

Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, experienced a massive earthquake that killed roughly 100,000 people. The country never recovered. Fifteen years later, one can still see evidence of the natural disaster’s evil in what’s left of the Haitian countryside.

We see things we can’t explain and will never understand. Last fall, it was the terrible floods in western North Carolina, where lives, homes, and other property were swept away forever. Survivors were, and remain, devastated.

Now, we’ve just witnessed horrendous flooding in central Texas, the so-called Texas Hill Country. Unbelievable damage but, more importantly, lives lost, including dozens of children at a Christian summer camp.

Can we explain any of these few examples as the willing act of a loving, caring God–a God who will never forsake us? Rabbi Harold Kushner, author of When Bad Things Happen to Good People, once said, “… it’s supreme hubris to think you can read God’s mind.” I’ll come back to Kushner later. Many of God’s ways, or perhaps his seemingly “hands off” approach, are as mysterious as the complex notion of faith.

I and those who matter the most in my life experienced an unimaginable tragedy almost three decades ago. I say that not for pity, as we are just a few of the millions who have personally had their hearts broken by something they never saw coming.

Where was God in our personal tragedy, your tragedy, or anyone else’s? A question for the ages, and one not to be answered in this lifetime. Even the Apostle Paul, author of over half the New Testament and a man acquainted with suffering, understood this. He said, “Now, we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully…(1 Corinthians 13:12 NIV).” So, you and I are in good company!

As kind people are want to do, my wife and I received books from many well-meaning friends. Kushner’s was one of them. Rabbi Kushner’s son, Aaron, died at age fourteen due to Progeria, a rapidly-aging disease. In his own grief, the rabbi came to the simple but astounding conclusion that we are wrong to look for God in the disaster. Better to look to him and say (and I paraphrase) “Now that this terrible thing has happened, will you walk with me and get me through it?”

That simple notion jarred me, and started me on my recovery from a very dark period in my life. At that time, I’d been a Christian for well over forty years . . . but it took just one paragraph from a Jewish rabbi to reawaken my faith.

No, God doesn’t get caught looking. He has a plan for each of us, and he sometimes fulfills it with a sense of humor!