I've been thinking about a lot of things lately. At work, I am mostly surrounded every day all day with stories of tragedy. I've gotten used to it, numbingly used to it. But the last few weeks I've been listening to oral histories spoken by a family who lost their son/brother/husband on 9/11. He was 29 years old in 2001, the same age I am now. And he had only been married for three months. Unbelievable heartbreak just to image what his new bride went through. Every bit of joy and fun that Dan and I shared in our first year of marriage was taken from those newlyweds and that is just not fair.
The truth is, tragedy happens every single day in a million different ways. I often find myself thinking about what could be around the corner, convinced things have gone too well for too long. Surely something horrible is next. Events like the terrorist attacks in Paris this last week are heartbreaking and terrifying but so is a single victim shooting or a deadly diagnosis. It's so easy to be wrapped up in fear from the little things inside your own community to the terror within the outside world. We shut ourselves in, relying on our own perception of survival and control. We let fear lead our lives. Stunting relationships because we are afraid of conversing with that type of person, living in that neighborhood, or traveling to that country. We can drive ourselves crazy thinking about what ifs...
What if I was on that plane?
What if I'm caught in that storm?
What if I'm on the road when that person drives drunk?
What if we were that couple?
What if I was sitting in that concert hall?
This past month I reread The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom and I was again overwhelmed by the terror that has always existed in this world. The Ten Booms were a Dutch Christian family that worked the underground in Holland during the Nazi occupation in WWII. They hid Jews in their own home and assisted hundreds of others to safe hiding places all the while taking risks and relying on their faith. We think today, in this moment, the evilness of mankind can't possibly get much worse. But how many people thought that after WWII and the truth of the Holocaust?
I don't want to spoil anything about the book but simply recommend that you read it or reread it. So many morsels of truth and evidence of God's plan at work amid terror. He was there then, he was present on 9/11, He was in Paris on Friday night, and He is with us now. Here are a few powerful quotes from The Hiding Place that have brought me tremendous hope every time I read them:
"There are no 'ifs' in God's world. And no places that are safer than other places. The center of His will is our only safety."
"It is not on our forgiveness any more than our goodness that the world's healing hinges, but on His. When he tells us to love our enemies, He gives, along with the command, the love itself.
"There is no pit so deep that God's love is not deeper still."
So tragedy will come again and unfortunately peace on earth is only possible at the end of days but that doesn't mean we can't spread hope in an effort to make things more comfortable, more loving, and more like God intended it to be from the beginning.
On Friday night I texted with Mandy just to feel her connection. She said to me "don't be afraid boo. This world is not our home." And she was right. It should be enough to know that everything, all of this, is in God's hand. Some people might respond to that statement by saying "why would God let something so terrible happen?" And I don't have an answer for that except this was not how God intended it to be. We, mankind, in our own sinful nature brought terror and darkness into this world and only He can lead us out of it.
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