Christian author Ellen
Vaughn has a chapter in one of her books entitled, “Grieving But Still Giving
Thanks.” In it she tells the heart-wrenching
story of one suffering saint, Bob Meyers, and how he learned to trust God in
the midst of pain.
Bob and his wife Judy had
been married almost twenty-seven years and raised three kids. They were still
very much in love and on the morning of September 26, 2000 everything in their
lives was perfect. The two kissed goodbye as Bob went to work and Judy drove to
the store to do some shopping.
Sitting at a busy four-way
intersection, Judy got a green light so she let off her brake and started
accelerating. However, as she crossed the intersection, a 73,000 pound,
tri-axel, fully loaded dump truck smashed into Judy’s minivan. The driver of
the dump truck wasn’t paying attention and the force of the impact threw Judy’s
van seventy-five feet down the road, where it was hit again by heavy-duty
pickup truck. Judy died instantly.
At Judy’s funeral a few
days later Bob said to a packed audience, “God is trustworthy. I don’t know
what He’s doing or why. But I know He knows. I am leaning on Him to get me
through.”
Two years later, on
October 2, 2002 Bob was watching the eleven o’clock news. The reports that
evening were about the infamous Beltway Sniper who was terrorizing the people
of Washington DC. The sniper had stuck
again, this time killing a man who stopped at a Northern Virginia Sunoco gas
station to fill up. As the man pumped his gas a single round from a .223 rifle
tore through his skull shattering it into fourteen pieces. At the time,
authorities weren’t releasing any information about the victim.
The next day, Bob’s
doorbell rang and in front of him stood family and friends who were crying.
“Bob, we have something to tell you,” his nephew said. “The DC sniper got Dean.
He’s dead.” Dean was Bob’s oldest son and the subject of the previous night’s
news reports. The weight of the situation caused Bob to crumple in a pile at
his front door. It was all too much to bear. In just two years he’d lost his
wife and son in tragic and unexpected circumstances.”
A few weeks after the
death of this son, Bob’s story was picked up the news media and he appeared on
Larry King’s cable television show. Bob was asked by Mr. King how he found the
strength to move on. Here is what Bob Meyers said to millions of people, “God
could have changed things for both Judy and Dean, but He didn’t. Instead of
trying to figure it all out, even though it doesn’t make a lick of sense to me,
I have to rest in the fact that God knows what He’s doing. There is no way I
could reconcile Judy and Dean’s deaths into a human reference. Trusting God
springs from believing Bible truth, which makes clear that God is God and I am
nothing. The comparison between God ways and mine, of His thoughts and mine, is
the difference between heaven and earth. I either believe that God is good and
is in control, or I don’t.”[1]
If there is one lesson
that we learn from Bob Meyers its this: every
time we suffer we are presented with a choice—bless God or curse God. In
fact, this was exactly the same choice that Job was faced with when Mrs. Job
saw her husband sitting on the ash heap, covered from head to toe in painful
sores, having just buried ten children.
“Then his wife said to
him, “Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die.” But he said to
her, “You speak as one of the foolish women would speak. Shall we receive good
from God, and shall we not receive evil?” In all this Job did not sin with his
lips” (Job 2:9-10).
Job’s perspective was
based on his theology—he was looking vertically. His wife’s perspective was
based on her trials—she was looking only horizontally. Job realized that for most of his life he had
been the recipient of many underserved blessing and therefore had no room to
rail against God. Job knew that God owed him nothing, yet He had been given so
much.
Before we curse God for
evil, we must think back to all the times He was silently blessing us, and we
never acknowledged His good gifts. In the end, Job chose God simply for God’s
sake irrespective of all the comforts, blessings and material things the Lord
had lavished upon Him. Do we value God the same way? Suffering will always
reveal what we truly believe about God.
Maybe the great scandal of
the universe is not “Why do bad things happen to good people?” but “Why does
God do so many good things for people who never recognize His existence?”
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