’D CONDUCTED THE wedding and felt good about the relationship I’d developed with the young couple during the process of preparation and rehearsal. I’d watched them carefully during the ceremony and reception, sensing it was a good match. My niece Jennifer and Jim, her fiancé, seemed to have been created for each other. The family reunion had also been fun. My wife and I drove back home to Maryland from the wedding in Indiana with many happy memories of a satisfying weekend. Three days later Jennifer was dead, killed in an accident. hen the call came that Jennifer had been killed, I was plunged into the deepest grief I could ever remember. Even the death of my parents hadn’t produced such trauma.

The swing in emotions—from celebration to the anguish of a funeral—was extremely unsettling, to say the least. We drove back to Indiana for the funeral with very heavy hearts. My brother and his family—and the young groom, of course—were in deep shock. We wept together. Many friends came to console. The service at our home church, where our parents had been baptized 50 years before, was warm and filled with reminders of the hope we have as Christians. But it was also very difficult.

eturning home, I continued to search for some resolution to my intense feelings. Remembering a book I’d previously read but couldn’t fully understand, I took it out again. I’d known there was a message of hope in what the author said, but since he is a philosopher, I found it difficult to translate his obtuse thinking into my simple and orderly brain. This time, though, understanding came easily as I followed his explanation of how he believes there can be meaning in life, even when accidents come that so drastically change our plans.

Arthur Vogel had written after a personal tragedy of his own. His search for meaning took him to the story of Job. It was there with Job, midway through the small book, that he came to a conclusion that led to my surprise. Here is what I read:

“The presence of God in the unlimited freedom of His will is the source and meaning of life. The closeness of God in the total gratuity of God’s will is Job’s consolation in the midst of the unjust suffering he endures.”*

Some might prefer to think of it as simply a comforting revelation. But that won’t entirely do it for me. For me, it was a dramatic and delightful surprise, something so unexpected that it caused an abrupt response on my part. It produced a profound affirmation from God that strengthened my relationship with Him and gave me coping power during a time of great need. Suddenly I knew that God had been very close all the time I was grieving. Even more surprising, it had never occurred to me to blame God for what had happened. I was even then being consoled by God. He had taken me in His arms and in that powerful embrace I’d felt His breath on my cheek, and I knew that He was, indeed, the source and meaning of my life.

An experience is serendipitous if it catches you off guard and if the ingredients have significance in your own particular context. God had carefully prepared me for what He wanted to say in that moment. My spiritual journey has taken me through grudging acquiescence to His authority, to cynicism about His involvement in my life, and finally to an overwhelming sense of His presence. I felt at the moment that God and I were holding hands and that neither of us would ever turn loose.

t’s probably true that the euphoria of my surprise will dissipate. I fully expect to encounter dark days ahead when life again weighs heavy on my shoulders. But nothing can snatch away from me the trust that’s beginning to penetrate all of who I am, providing the key to open all kinds of doors. Not feeling alone in the universe is the basis of a Christian’s peace. As I look back at the period of my deepest grief for Jennifer, I realize that I never felt I was alone. Grief is normal and necessary. Though it was an unwelcome and a somewhat new experience for me, it would eventually bring healing. I should have expected God to keep His word to walk with me, but because the intense mourning was such a new experience, I was not prepared for the joyful surprise.

I remembered what Jesus said to the disciples at the ascension: “Surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matt. 28:20).† The impact of that promise was slow to  sink  in. They stood looking into the sky even after the clouds had closed in beneath the entourage of angels. Then suddenly two angels appeared with encouraging words: “This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven” (Acts 1:11).

There would have been very mixed feelings as they left the mountain that day. Certainly awe—for they had experienced an epiphany, a divine confirmation that Jesus was the Son of God. But they were also fearful about what the future would be for them without the One who’d been the center of their lives the past three years. How would they do it without their Master? And how would He keep His promise to be with them always?

I also remembered how it had been in the very beginning when God enjoyed open communion with the man and woman He’d created. What I find so fascinating about this story is that God had a free and open relationship with them. In chapter 3 of Genesis the impression is given that God often came walking in the garden in the cool of the day to spend intimate time with the couple. God is mystery and likely always will be. How He could be everywhere present and yet specifically there in the garden—in fact, how He could be confined within His own creation—I can’t even begin to understand it. However it is, God loved having intimacy with the beings He created, much as parents thrill to be near their children.

The introduction of sin altered the open relationship between Creator and creature. When they chose to rebel, Adam and Eve established a barrier between themselves and God. Moses was told he could not see God face to face and live—not because God preferred hiding, but because of the fragile nature of sinful humanity. Isaiah saw God in a vision, and even in that very limited sphere, he feared for his life. “Woe to me!” he cried. “I am ruined!  For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty” (Isa. 6:5).

God’s desire to reassure His children of His presence has often resulted in unusual spectacles. The nation of Jewish slaves who escaped from Egypt had the pillar of fire by night and the cloud by day as a constant reminder that their God was with them. He even spoke audibly to them from atop Mount Sinai. But it was such a frightening experience that the people asked that He speak to Moses and allow Moses to relay the message. Elijah looked for God in a great earthquake and a mighty wind and a roaring fire, but God chose to come in a still small voice.

The writer of Hebrews, after reminding us that God in the past sent prophets telling His people of His presence, notes that He reserved the greatest revelation of all to these last days. “He has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe” (Heb. 1:2). And Hebrews describes the Son as “the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word” (verse 3). One of Jesus’ many names is the one from Isaiah, Emmanuel—“God with us.”

Yes, God is ever with us, though His presence is often veiled. And because that veil often seems impenetrable, we sometimes despair, accusing Him of abandoning us to our fate. I think that for God there must be a powerful “temptation” to reach through the barrier and prove His compassion. All through the generations men and women have cried out from their self-inflicted predicaments for God to reveal Himself, but all the while He has been right there, as close as ever.

oday there are also many whose eyes of faith are closed. Many are living without courage. When trouble comes they find themselves lost in a sea of despond, unable to reach out and touch God. I’ve been there; I know how desperation overwhelms you when you feel you’re all alone. No one of us is immune to tragedy. All families have been visited just as ours was when Jennifer was so cruelly killed. Because God doesn’t always intervene, we sometimes assume He doesn’t care, that He’s perhaps busy off in some remote section of the universe.

Do those experiences separate us from God? Not on your life! Paul says it best in Romans: nothing can separate us from the love of God, “neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation” (Rom. 8:38).

Then why is it so hard to see Him, I mean see Him with the eyes of faith?

What for me was a very long journey can be experienced by each of God’s children. God wants to be found by every one of us. His promise is that if we make our home with Him, He will make His with us. Don’t ever forget that God gave His own Son to rescue us from the misery of this earth. Jesus has become a living chain that binds us to His heart that was already full of love for us. Having given all heaven, He is not going to abandon us for any reason. What a pity I wasn’t always so sure of God’s comforting presence.

How about you? Do you have the confidence that He is with you through all the rhythms of your life?  Merely to know there is a God is not enough. If it hasn’t happened to you already, the time will come when you will need to lean heavily on Him to take you through a crisis. In that hour when you need to appropriate every possible resource, God will want to respond, but you will have no ability to reach out and hold on to Him unless your journey has already prepared you for that possibility.

ife will always be a process. I haven’t arrived at my destination, nor has anyone else. Each day can add a significant step in the journey. I urge you  to step closer to God. Allow Him to accompany you through all the experiences of your life. Give Him the highest priority of all. Faith becomes strong by making your relationship with Him intentional every day. May you be surprised just as I was when you need Him most.

Postscript: Since this experience my wife died of cancer, introducing yet deeper trauma into my life. In fact, I became despondent and felt for a while that God had locked Himself away from my sorrow. Healing has occurred, however, and I now know that God’s presence was my consolation, just as in the earlier experience when Jenni died.

^*Arthur Vogel, God, Prayer and Healing (Eerdmans, 1995), p. 81.
^†All Scripture references are taken from the New International Version.

_________________________
Steve Willsey is the associate pastor of the Spencerville Seventh-day Adventist Church in Silver Spring, Maryland.