• I was with a dear friend this week whose father, a German Jew, was sent to a concentration camp during the war. All the historic horrors ensued. I asked her if her father felt betrayed by his country, or was it more the Nazi party, and she said, “I think he felt betrayed by God.” That line hung in the air and neither of us spoke for a while, but I kept thinking of Job’s words after the loss of his wealth and — try to imagine it — his children: “The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21).
• Whether or not a man can bless God in tragedy depends on how he sees himself relative to God, how he understands what he is entitled to, and what God is entitled to. Of himself, Job said, “What is man that you make so much of him?” Of God he said, “ how can a man be in the right before God? If one wished to contend with him, one could not answer him once in a thousand times. He is wise in heart and mighty in strength, who has hardened himself against him, and succeeded?” (7:17; 9:2-4). The man who sees himself and God in such ways is able to believe after tragedy because his sense of personal entitlement — that subconscious disposition that is always crying out that God owes him something — is all but nonexistent. People who do not know God in this way do not know God at all. They may be part of a religious community, with practices and doctrines, but their hearts bow before nothing and no one. Think of the Rich Young Ruler: complying with the law in every respect, but entirely ignorant of what it is he actually worships.
• I don’t mean to be dismissive of tragedy. Several years ago my son and I were on a bike ride and he was hit by a car. His head hit the pavement first and both the EMT and the ER doc said his helmet saved his life (make sure yours fits tightly!). He was riding behind me at the time of the accident, but having ridden bikes all my life I recognized immediately the clattering sound of a bike on the pavement. I dropped my bike and ran back to him. I have no memory whatsoever of getting off my bike, or dropping it, or running. I just remember being at his side, holding his bleeding head in my hands. If I had found him dying, rather than returning to consciousness, I have no idea, but no illusions, regarding how I would have reacted. I am a fundamentally weak man in such things. I know God gives grace when we must have it.
• Regardless of how prepared we may or may not be for such a moment, we, and our children, are God’s to do with as he sees fit. This is, in part, what it means for him to be God and for us to be creatures. When God confirms this understanding with Job, he uses a series of rhetorical questions: “were you there when I laid the foundation of the earth?” and “have the gates of death been revealed to you?” and “where is the way to the dwelling of light, and where is the place of darkness?” The questions are brilliant in how they make clear that neither Job, nor we, can give any account of the ordinary world in which we live each day. Only the maker of the world can answer such questions.
• To know God as God is a gateway that changes everything. Once you are convinced that his entitlement to your life is absolute, you realize your little plans for yourself are entirely negotiable. “Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit’— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that’” (Jas 4:13-15). Where would he take you if you were willing to go anywhere? Who would you be if you were his to mold entirely as he saw fit?