Lesson learned

Have you ever wondered why bad things happen to good people? Have you thought about why sometimes good people have bad things happen while awful people sometimes seem to breeze through life? Sure you have. We all have. I can tell you right now that I am not the guy with all the answers by a long shot but I learned something recently that gave me a little bit of insight into the matter. This will by no means explain everything and I make no claim as to the mind of God but I learned recently a valuable lesson that brought me a new realization of the omniscience of our Creator.

I went with six close church friends to New Orleans for a couple of days last week. We went to help do some work on a church that had been badly damaged by the hurricane but quickly realized that was not the main reason that we had been sent there. Our first day we worked on the church some but then got word that a church member and her husband needed our help as well. Their house had extensive water damage and needed to have the interior walls completely torn down. We were glad we could help but somewhat taken aback by the man of the house. This man, Bill, was not a member of the church like his wife but claimed to be an Atheist. He made several other claims that make me believe that Bill does not know what to believe.

After being at his house for just a few minutes, I knew we were in the right place. Bill was an older man, probably seventy pounds overweight, a chain smoker and a very loud, obnoxious man who seemed to want to scare off the "religious" guys by using at least one curse word in every sentence. He would not listen to anything anybody said about much of anything and made it clear that he did not want to hear about God or church. He said God killed his son and he was mad at God. Yes, the God that did not exist was a murderer! Bill said several times that it was his anger that kept him going and he was not going to give it up.

I have to admit that I looked at Bill as a target. I was bound and determined that I was going to tell Bill about Jesus even if I had to fight him! I knew the chances of me having another opportunity with him would be slim and so while most of the others kept working I got Bill in my sights and just went for it! I found Bill in the trailer in which they were staying in the front yard and went in to cram Jesus down his throat but I didn't get the chance.

My friend Scott had already found Bill and was sitting there talking about sports when I walked in the trailer. Bill was loudly telling Scott everything he knew about everything and and as soon as he paused to take a breath I tried to change the subject to more divine matters. The problem was that Bill just talked over me loudly and persistently. He said he was angry. He admitted that his anger was not necessarily directed at anything. He was just angry. He was mainly angry because his twenty-six year old son had died five years ago and as much as I tried to tell him that Jesus understood and cared for him and wanted to have a relationship with him, Bill just tuned me out frustrating both of us.

That was when Scott started telling Bill about his own son, Ryan, who had died about the same time that Bill lost his son. Ryan was in high school when cancer took his life and, as one can understand, tore a hole in Scott's very being. Bill listened as Scott went on to tell how it seemed unfair at the time that Ryan would be taken in the prime of his life when they all had such lofty goals for him. Bill, who had complained earlier that nobody understood his pain, loudly expressed his gratefulness that, finally, somebody understood! Finally, somebody could relate to him! I remember his words: "You understand! You understand!", he said, pointing his finger at Scott.

I knew right then that God was telling me to shut up and start praying. I sat there praying for both Scott and Bill as they "compared notes" on their sons' deaths and bonded through that in a way that I could never have known. Scott told Bill in a way that only God could lead that one of Scott's reasons for getting up in the morning is the fact that he knows that he will see Ryan again in Heaven one day. You could almost see that thought sinking in to Bill's mind and I could barely contain myself as I witnessed the Holy Spirit of our loving and forgiving God work on Bill's heart and mind.

We left Bill's trailer that day without Bill coming to have a life-changing relationship with Jesus Christ but Scott left his card and the promise that we would all be praying for him. This was not an empty promise and I know for a fact that most all of us that were on that trip have been and will continue to be praying for Bill. I am burdened for Bill and cannot wait to hear back from New Orleans about him. If nothing else though I realized that, as the Bible says, the rain falls on the just and the unjust and that sometimes God allows us to go through hard times so that we can be that light in the darkness for which a blind world is desperately looking. Again, I do not have any claim to the mind of God but I appreciate the lesson He taught me through this.