Our community was painfully rocked last week by the crash of a plane carrying five leaders (four pastors and one lay person) of one of the churches of our city. The Lead Pastor was the only person who survived.
Questions have been swirling, especially in the Christian community. How did it happen? Why? Why only one survivor? Why did God allow this to happen? What is God’s will in all of this? Why did God save Kennon and not the others?
Amidst all the questions and my own personal reflection, the line of a poem came vivid and has been dominant in my mind.
You, who keep account of crises and transition in this life, sit down the first time nature says plain “No” to some “Yes” in you and walks over you, in gorgeous sweeps of scorn.
Most of us don’t live very long before nature says “No” to some “Yes” in us, and “walks over you in gorgeous sweeps of scorn.” That’s a big part of what it means to be human.
It comes to us as young people, when we become painfully aware that our gifts and talents are not the same as others. Is anything more painful for a guy than the realization that he can’t be the jock – the powerful athlete that his friend is?
How many sorrowful nights do 15 and 16-year-old girls have when they know they’re not going to make homecoming court, much less be the Homecoming Queen.
That’s just the beginning of what becomes a painful, recurring reality throughout life – nature saying “no” to some “yes” within us.
There are the dramatic cases: A plane crash claims the lives of four faithful church leaders, leaving only one behind.
A birth defect limits a baby for life.
Business failure wrecks the security of a family.
Four young college women are murdered.
As trite as I may sound, a practical fact is essential for us to deal with nature saying no to some yes within us: recognize that there is a tragic dimension to life; and even though we might reason about it in a satisfactory way, still all of our reasoning does not alleviate the pain of it. We simply have to live with the reality that forces and facts that we don’t understand will continue to interrupt God’s good intentions for us. Nature will continue to say No to some Yes within us.
We need to go one step further…a decisive step of faith that is essential. The revelation of faith is that God doesn’t get rid of suffering; He uses suffering for our good and His glory.
God did not order or will the tragic airplane crash, but God will use it. You and I can count on it. God doesn’t get rid of our suffering; he uses it for our good and his glory.
Lodge two sentences in your mind as support for this truth. One, life is not fair – but life isn’t God. Two, everything that happens is not the will of God – but God has a will in everything that happens. He will use the “no” that nature says to us for our good and His glory.