On May 3, 2021, a tornado steamrolled through our property, making a huge mess that’s still costing us money, time and energy. A year later on the same exact date, something—or rather, someone—wonderful blew into our lives: Lily Bernadette Crum, our ninth glorious grandchild.
This isn’t the first time God has taken His brush and painted over a sad time in my life with the happy birth of a grandchild. Our first grandbaby, Edda Rose, was born on Jan. 22, the same date on which we’d learned, 27 years earlier, that our first baby had died five months into my pregnancy.
For 27 years, a dark cloud hung over the latter part of January for me until Edda—8 lbs., 2 oz. of beautiful grandbaby joy—was born. She was my rainbow.
And now to sweeten May 3, which we would have otherwise always remembered as “Tornado Day,” here came Lily, also weighing in at exactly 8 lbs., 2 oz.
You think God isn’t into details?
So why doesn’t God just prevent tragedies like miscarriages and tornadoes? He certainly could, and maybe, unbeknownst to us, He sometimes does. My understanding, though, is that because God gave humans free will and we messed that up in a big way, we live in a fallen world, and we all experience the aftereffects of that “fallenness” in big and small ways throughout our lives.
God, however, is a Redeemer who can redeem not only our fallen souls, if we allow Him to, but other broken pieces of our lives as well.
That’s the hope-filled promise of Romans 8:28: “And we know that God causes all things to work together for good for those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.”
The phrase “work together” in that verse comes from the Greek word “synergeo,” from which we get the word synergy, which occurs when different things interact in a way that produces a greater effect than the mere sum of the individual things. I think of it like baking a cake. Some of the ingredients taste bad if eaten individually, but when all of them are mixed together correctly, something good is created.
It takes faith to believe Romans 8:28. I hear stories of abuse, neglect, abandonment, betrayal and loss, and it is heartbreaking. Those stories, however, don’t reflect God’s perfect heart, but rather the dark heart of His enemy, Satan, whose mission is to “steal, kill and destroy” everything and everyone God loves (John 10:10).
While in painful moments I’ve found it challenging to believe God can use my wounds and disappointments as ingredients to make something good, in retrospect I’ve seen Him do just that. I’ve seen Him use my painful brushes with the “fallenness” of this world—my journeys through grief, loss, and physical suffering—to grow compassion for and bridges to others who are on similar paths, and to help me release my tight grip on the things of this world as I await the infinitely better world to come.
In the meantime, God hasn’t left His children alone. As promised, Jesus sent the “Comforter,” the Holy Spirit, to come alongside us and help heal our deepest hurts.
We naturally want to avoid suffering, but when it comes, it helps to know it’s never wasted. Evil can’t win the day if I choose to believe God can use all things for good.
Sometimes He even paints over dark days with the brightest of colors, like He did when He painted “Here’s Lily!” over “Tornado Day.”
The “good” God brings isn’t always quite as obvious as that, but it’s there or is coming if we open our eyes of faith to see it.