In this Issue
March 2005

FROM THE PASTOR'S DESK
Look at tragedy through lens of eternity
By Dean McIsaac
Quaboag Valley Baptist Church

Last Dec. 25, Terri and I had a wonderful Christmas Day with our boys and each other… little knowing that halfway around the world 24 hours would bring a disaster that would leave us all shaken.

An earthquake in the middle of the Indian Ocean caused a tsunami to strike the shores of multiple countries and causing a death toll potential of 300,000-plus souls. How is a person of faith to think? Was it a mere cosmological coincidence? Was it an act of God? Were the people affected under divine judgment? For those who believe in a personal God who created the universe, who is omnipotent and who loves people, how do we explain this? You can feel the struggle of attempting an honest answer. How could a God who loves us allow such a tragedy? On that fateful Dec. 26, was He preoccupied or simply inattentive?

Let’s be honest. We don’t have the answer. Why did the tsunami happen? Why did it happen there instead of 200 miles off the coast of Cape Cod? What if it had been an earthquake of 9.0 magnitude with its epicenter in Brookfield? What then? Is it because we in Brookfield are nobler than the inhabitants along the shores of Sri Lanka or Indonesia?

Stop for a moment with me, will you? Do you know how many people died in the United States two years ago? 2,403,351. Nearly one million of those died from heart disease and more than a million more from cancer-related diseases. Are you shocked when you read these numbers? Is it “normal” and, therefore, more acceptable for us? The eventual death toll is going to be 6.2 billion, isn’t it? (To date, the death rate for human kind is 100 percent.) Scripture says, “It is appointed unto man to die …” Physical death was a consequence of “The Fall” noted in Genesis 3.

One time Jesus was told that 18 people in Jerusalem had died when a tower collapsed on them. Listen to His perspective in Luke 13: “… the 18 men who died when the Tower of Siloam fell on them, were they worse sinners than the rest living in Jerusalem? No, and I tell you that unless you repent, you will perish, too.”

We tend to wrap our questions and our logic around “the here and now;” God looks through the lens of eternity. To be sure, if our existence is limited to our time on earth, and that’s all there is, the number and quality of our days here are the only yardstick we have. If, though, eternity exists and God has offered us the gift of spending that eternity with Him … and if the challenges of life here are part of our preparation for life hereafter, well, that changes things entirely. It doesn’t erase our questions or our pain but it does shed a new perspective.

What do you think God might have planned for Himself if He were to take a test drive being human? Well, He actually did that. One night in Bethlehem when Joseph and Mary watched the birth of their Son … on that night, God was “born” into the realm of humanity. The miracle of the incarnation meant that Jesus would face the very questions we are asking. And get this—God’s plan included that His Son would be born in a scandal (an illegitimate birth to unwed teenagers), that He would be poor; in the prime of His life, He would have a brief public ministry cut short and unjustly be put to death as a rebel. Does this make any sense? Why not a long life with “an easy passing” into the life to come?

When the question is asked, “Where was God in all of this suffering?” Jesus, the One who also suffered, gave us His answer—right there in the middle of it!

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