Tragedy is sometimes a circumstantial method by which God gains our attention. Number 21:4-7 describes some events that happened to the Israelites:
“They traveled from Mount Hor along the route to the Red Sea, to go around Edom. But the people grew impatient on the way; they spoke against God and against Moses, and said, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? There is no bread! There is no water! And we detest this miserable food!” Then the Lord sent venomous snakes among them; they bit the people and many Israelites died. The people came to Moses and said, “We sinned when we spoke against the Lord and against you. Pray that the Lord will take the snakes away from us.” So Moses prayed for the people. »
We can’t always view tragedy in a person’s life as a sign of God’s disapproval, but we should look at every tragic situation through a spiritual filter. Though that is a difficult assignment, people such as Joni Eareckson Tada are living evidence of God’s sovereign design in calamity. When she was a young teenager, full of God’s vibrancy, Joni’s life was radically altered one summer afternoon when she dove into a pool of shallow water. In the twinkling of an eye, she was introduced to the numb world of quadriplegics.
Months of despair in a hospital did little to bring any hope for her now-shaky future. The eternal question “ How can God allow this ?” danced on her lips day and night. Then steadily her faith in the love of God for her began to surmount her anxious and sometimes bitter queries.
In subsequent years, she developed the remarkable capacity to paint with a brush gripped in her teeth. Her heart for God grew by leaps and bonds and a ministry to millions began, a ministry birthed and nourished by tragedy. Her books, movies, lectures, and special outreach to the handicapped have made her overcoming life a familiar story to most Christiana worldwide.
How many thousands of devoted Christians have been called to the ministry through the life of Jim Elliot? When he was killed by the Auca Indians in his late twenties, it seemed on the surface an untimely death and loss. Yet his wife’s recounting of his life, heart, and action for God in Through Gates of Splendor , The Shadow of the Almighty , and the Journals of Jim Elliot has been the spiritual catapult to thrust untold numbers into the fields “ white for harvest ” (John 4:35)