Grace Community Christian Church

 

Archived Things Above

God is Good! (2/1/02)

Now that I think about it, the email I sent to a few people immediately after the accident may have seemed rather odd. "God is good!" I wrote, "Kim & the three girls were on their way home from TJ on Oppossumtown Pike when they were drilled from behind by another student."

Later, as I drove to the hospital to check on Bethy & Kim, who were banged up but otherwise unhurt, I had some time to reflect on the phrase, "God is good." Would I have still claimed that had there been more serious injuries, or worse? Unhesitatingly, my answer was "Yes!" God has given me the gift of my wife & daughters, & I have enjoyed them for over two decades. There are many who never had even that much time. God is good, even if it had all ended on Oppossumtown Pike.

But then I wondered, "Why me?" Usually this is asked in the wake of loss, but I had been spared the loss. Mine was the survivor's question, the lucky one, the near miss. "Why did my family survive unscathed when others have been wiped out?" Is it mere fate - it just wasn't their time? Is it a wake-up call of some kind? A reminder of our frail mortality & of the scarily close line that divides the living and the dead?

It's nighttime now as I write this, & my family is all safe in their beds. I'll preach on Sunday, per normal. Tomorrow, they'll get up & go through another routine, albeit sore day. I've been spared for now, the anguish of goodbye. But not forever.

Chuck Fordyce, my home minister, loved to tell his congregation that "Christians aren't the pampered children of the universe." God causes his rain to fall on the just & the unjust.

But today, this time, I am pampered! I am blessed! I am still whole! God is good!

And when my turn to be rained-upon comes, guess what? God will still be good! I did not choose to follow Him so that my life would be easy, or protected, but so that it might have meaning. And hope. And steer others to Him, in loss & in gain.

God is good. All the time.


Jim Dewar --