Where is God When Bad Things Happen
By Z Zoccolante
(Listen to the audio of this wonderful post in the blue box below!)

I see God everywhere – in tiny flowers that push their way through the cut grass, wind dancing through trees, in dog kisses, or lying down in empty parking lots watching the slow fade of stars.

I also remember a long period of time I spent angry with God. If he was there, which I believed he was, and wasn’t helping me then he was cruel and uncaring. Internally, I surmised that I wasn’t good enough to be helped.
 

We all have situations like this when grief, sorrow, or huge life transition sweeps us away on a rollercoaster of chaos. When God doesn’t respond in the ways we’d like, we may think he’s not there, that he doesn’t care, or that he’s leaving us to suffer through on our own. Yet when I take an inventory of my life, I can see that God’s always been there even though didn’t he respond in the immediate ways I’d wanted.

This week a friend of mine shared a story with me. She’s an elderly woman of God, who walks with a walker and has painful arthritis.

One evening around 9:30PM she parked on the street in front of her house to take groceries in. Because of her arthritis, and need for the walker, she has to brings the bags in two by two, tying one on each side of the walker and making multiple trips.

That night the gravel on the sidewalk area was unsteady and she felt her feet slipping from under her and her arms failing in the air as she went down towards the ground. The first word out of her mouth was, “Jesus help me.” She was scared and flailed in the air, her knees unstable as she fell to the dirt below.

In physical therapy, they tell her to get on her knees like a baby crawling and then push herself up to standing. She tried a few times but couldn’t. The problem was, her knees have been badly damaged and she’s never been able to us them to help her get up.

So she lay there on her side in the dirt. A few cars passed by but her car was blocking her view from anyone in the street being able to see that she’d fallen. Normally, people walk their dogs up and down the street, but tonight no one passed along the sidewalk.

(This is where, in the story, I assumed that God was going to magically send someone to help her. Seems legit right. She prayed to God and God would help her.)

But no one came . . . She stayed there for about 7-8 minutes wondering what to do. Then she finagled her body near her walker, which was horizontal on the ground. She’d never been able to before, but she was able now to push her body upright and her knees were strong enough to stand (meanwhile there was still no one to help her).

Her thought as soon as she stood was, “Now that I’m up, I need to know that I’m alright.” Her knees felt strong and she made the few trips into her house with her groceries.

She was worried that her fall might cause damage but there was none. She moved around that night doing laundry and walking around her house. She got the feeling that moving was beneficial, that in a way her movement was working out her knee.

In the morning, her knees felt better than they had in a long time. She said the Lord was so good. That he watched over her, that there was nothing wrong when she could have easily broken bones.

She said –
when she was falling
she thought,
“This just must not happen.”
But it did happen.

When I thought about my friend’s story, I wondered at first why God didn’t bring someone, walking their dog along their sidewalk, to help her up. And God let her fall into the dirt. She was scared and she was down for about 8 minutes. She didn’t know what she was going to do, how she was going to get up.

I thought about how easily God could have intervened differently, but maybe that wasn’t the point. Maybe the point was to show her that he was there, that she wasn’t alone. Even though she fell he could give her strength to get back up. Even though she hit the ground, he could protect her from harm, from damage to her body. In fact, he could show her that he could make her weak knees even stronger despite the fall.

I thought about her experience in light of our lives. All of us would love a God who magically intervenes like a superhero. And although God can do that (see the Old Testament and Jesus’ miracles), often times the bigger lesson is that we’re not alone. God is there, working in his way, teaching us to trust.

Forward Locomotion:

If you’re going through a rough time in your life, remember that God can work all things out for your good. You might fall even when falling might be the scariest thing. God may not bring you magical answers because the bigger lesson might be to learn to trust that he’s got you. He’s got you.

Remember to see God everywhere, even as we fall.

Because sometimes all we have to do is trust that God can help us stand.

With Love,

Z ;)