URGENT PRAYERS & My Thoughts on Suffering

UPDATE:

Brian has been released from the hospital, Kristy has a broken back. Please please please pray. He still has not told Kristy.

UPDATE:

Brian is okay, Kristy is being "worked on" - whatever that means. Please keep them in your prayers, still.

ORIGINAL POST:

I do not want to make this post. In fact, I feel physically ill just thinking about it. My stomach has been twisted in so many different knots, and I just do not want to tell you all this, but I have to, because friends of mine need your prayers desperately this night, and in the future I am sure for a while.

Today a family which I am friends with and have known for nearly 4 years got into a car accident. They have a 3 year old daughter - one of the most beautiful children I have ever seen - and she did not survive this crash. Brian and Kristy are in critical condition, and we don't even think they have been told yet that their only child did not make it.

I know that most of you do not know this family. In fact, I was not extremely close to them, but they are a part of God's family and that makes them my family too.

Please lift up their names in prayer tonight. Please pray that they come through okay, that the doctors attending to them care for them the best that they know how to. Please pray for Brian and Kristy - when they find out about Helen, I am sure their world will shatter. Pray for strength, pray for comfort. This family has touched so many lives with joy and encouragement. I am blessed to know them, and they need your prayers desperately. Please pray.

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This post I have been working on for well over a week now. I figured that tonight may be an appropriate time to finish it up, and to share with everyone.

You don't have to agree with my views here. I'm posting this in hopes that some people might be encouraged or helped. I don't want to seem like I am saying I know what a lot of you go through when you're losing family members who are very close to you, children or siblings or parents, what have you. I've lost family as well but I will not pretend that I know what it is like to lose a child especially. I do not know the heartache associated with that. I hope that I never will know, but at the same time, I am doing my best to sympathize as best I can.

Please don't take this the wrong way!! As I am a preacher's wife, I do think that I will encounter many instances where I may have to help console people during their time of loss. This is as much (or maybe even more) a study for me as it may be for you as well.

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I want to do a study on God. I feel a better understanding of God is something we need in order to have a good relationship with Him. On the topic of suffering, I think a lot of people have misunderstandings about our Father's nature. I know a lot of people out there say things like, "If there is a God, how come there is so much suffering in the world?" "If there is a God, why did my mother/father/grandparent/sibling/child have to die?" and other such things. There are people who have experienced loss who ask the question, "Why?" I have been there. I have asked that question.

I have heard many people say that the death of a loved one is just "God's will". They often quote Job 1:21 and say, "The Lord gives and the Lord takes away".

In my studies of God and His nature, I have come to the conclusion that this is not so. While Job has stated this, we have to remember his situation. He just lost nearly everything. We've all said things when we were upset, and this is this same sort of situation.

God does not take away.

He just doesn't work that way. The fact is that humanity is just that ... humanity. Human. People have choices, make choices, others may suffer. Things may happen naturally, and while all this is unfortunate, Christ did not come to this earth to save humanity from being human. The righteous and the innocent sometimes are subject to suffering, sometimes even death. God is not blameworthy for having created a world in which righteous, innocent, and wicked people experience suffering or pain.

God is not our enemy. Death is a sting from the enemy, "O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?" I Corinthians 15:22.

Suffering does not happen because of His meanness, His ignorance, or weakness, because God lacks no love, no knowledge, and no power.

So why does this happen? The very first book of the Bible tells us why death exists in this world. In Genesis 3, the serpent tempted Eve and she ate of the fruit and gave to her husband Adam. Because of this, sin entered the world, and thus death as a result.

Suffering happens because sin entered the world. It is not always a result of what someone has done (i.e. a child who is born addicted to cocaine because it's mother subjected the child to it in the womb, or a man dying in a car accident because a drunk driver hit him head on). Sometimes suffering just happens because it is the way of the world.

If God does not take away, then why is Job 1:21 in the bible? I believe with all of my heart that the Bible is the inspired word of God - that He inspired the writers and everything written down has been put there by God's inspiration. However, this does not mean that every word spoken by those in the Bible is inspired. There are lies recorded in the Bible. God did not make these people lie. As I mentioned before, think of Job's situation. It is not hard to understand how he must have felt this way.

When people say "It was just their time" - they do not know this. When people say "It was God's will" - they cannot know this.

I write this to try and help those who may be suffering, and also because I know that as a preacher's wife, this is a topic I will have to deal with. We are commanded in Galatians 6:2 to bear one another's burdens, and it is important that we understand God's involvement in our suffering before we try and comfort others.

One of my favorite verses in the Bible displays God's involvement with our suffering. "Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort, who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God." II Corinthians 1:3-4. God is the God of all comfort, not suffering. And what a comfort it is to know that God will always be here for us when we need His comfort.

Remember, He was in a similar situation once, too, as He watched His only begotten Son suffer and die on the cross, blameless and perfect, for the sins of the world.