Tag Archives: tragedy

Clouds

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There’s this quote, “Behind the clouds is the sun still shining.” I’ve heard it used in the church to explain where God is during a tragedy. That he’s still shining, present, even though all we see are the dark clouds around us. But I want to challenge that.

What if God isn’t just the sun shining behind the clouds? What if God is in the clouds themselves?

I’m not saying that God creates tragedy in our lives, but he definitely works in those tragedies for our good. When my daughters each passed away, God was preparing communities, relationships, and even my own heart to enter into that tragedy. He worked in those moments, days, and weeks to show his power and presence in my life. He never left my side.

In a recent devotional, it showed how God’s presence in clouds is depicted in both the Old and New Testament. In Exodus, the Israelites were led by a cloud when they left Egypt, and once the tabernacle was built, the cloud remained.

So the cloud of the Lord was over the tabernacle by day, and fire was in the cloud by night, in the sight of all the Israelites during all their travels.

Exodus 40:38

In the New Testament, Peter, James and John, along with Jesus, go up the Mount to witness the Transfiguration, and God makes himself known again from a cloud.

Then a cloud appeared and covered them, and a voice came from the cloud: “This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!”

Mark 9:7

Clouds, like tragedy, can be uncertain. Anyone who has driven through thick fog can attest to that. We don’t know exactly when things will become clearer, but knowing that God is within that uncertainty, working in ways too great for me to understand, can bring me a sense of peace and hope. One day, the clouds will part, the fog will lift, and we will see everything as clear as a bright sunny day.

Prayers for Paris

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If you have been on Facebook, or the internet in general this weekend, you have probably read about the tragedy in Paris.  Hundreds of people were attacked in restaurants and a concert, as well as outside a soccer game.  I’ve seen the videos, heard the stories, and my heart breaks for that city.

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In 2012, Michael and I had the opportunity to go to Paris for our fifth anniversary.  When we were planning to go, a lot of people warned me that the people in Paris were rude.  However, I never met a single rude person in Paris, or anywhere in France.  In fact, the people I met were helpful, funny, kind, sarcastic, inspiring, and incredible.

We enjoyed the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre, but it’s the humanity of Paris that attracted me to the city.  The night that the terrorists attacked, Parisians opened their homes to those who couldn’t get back to their own.  It exemplified the heart I met 3 years ago.

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These kinds of attacks can happen anywhere, and they have happened.  In cities, towns, and schools, unspeakable acts of anger and hatred that devoured someone to the point of taking the lives of the innocent.  But I find that in each of those stories of sadness, there are sparks of hope.  People come together to mourn with those who have lost loved ones.  They come to heal together, remember together, and rebuild together.

Hope is not lost.  Love continues to stand against the darkness of this world.  I pray for Paris as it heals from this tragedy.  May God give you comfort and peace in the moments you need it the most.

The Worth of Others

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Recently, in our area, a young teenage boy took his own life due to bullying.  It breaks my heart that someone so young would believe he was hated so much, believe there was no hope for him, and believe that the only choice he had was to end his life so early.  There have been a lot conversations in our neighborhoods and in the media about bullying and what we as a society can do to prevent things like this from happening.

I mentioned in a previous post about realizing my worth in God, that he loves me so much that he would sacrifice his own son so that I could have a chance at a relationship with Him.  But I tend to stop there.  I want to live my life in a closer relationship with God, and I can get so inward focused that I lose sight of the next logical step.

If I’m worth that much to God, because I was created by him that means that everyone that was created by him is worth that much.  That means every person on this earth is worth the redemption of Christ and a chance to have a relationship with God.

That seems overwhelming. However, I don’t think God is tasking any one person to love every person in the world, but I do think that He is calling us to love every person in our life.  For some people in our lives, that’s easy.  It’s easy to love those who think like us, who live like us, and who talk like us.

But it’s the people who aren’t like us, who disagree with us, who lead lives that we don’t understand, who attack and criticize us for who we are, that we tend to avoid.  It’s easy to unfriend, delete, block or isolate ourselves from these kinds of people, but I believe God put these people, these opportunities for love, into our lives for a reason.

When we were still sinners, Christ died for us.  When we were still unlovable, angry, critical, judgmental.  When we didn’t live our lives in a way that honored God.  When we were the kind of people God should isolate himself from, He still came into our lives and loved us anyway.  Why should we be any different to the people around us?

We don’t love them so that they will do better in their lives.  We aren’t in relationship with them to control their behavior or convert them to our way of thinking.  We give them the same worth that God gives to us.  We love them unconditionally so that they will know God.   God gave us his love to share with others, not to keep to ourselves.

The tragedies in our community are a blatant cry for the love of God and the desire to know our true worth in a cruel and deceiving world.  As Christians, we are called to remind others of the truth through our compassion, our love, our words and actions to everyone we meet, lift each other up when we fall, and encourage each other along our journey in this life.