Where is God when it hurts? by Philip Yancey

Author:Philip Yancey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Suffering -- Religious aspects -- Christianity
Publisher: Zondervan Pub. House
Published: 1990-11-13T16:00:00+00:00

that still smelled like fresh paint and looked neat and clean. But Mr. Buckley suddenly awoke at two o'clock in the morning, smelling smoke. He jumped out of bed just in time: The hallway of their house was ablaze, and flames were creeping along the baseboard to their bedroom. He and his wife escaped, barely, but lost all their possessions. The fire had been set by their neighbors.

Mr. Buckley told me, "Well, I reckon we been through a lot. I lost two of my three children, and I lost my first wife, and we almost got ourselves killed that night, fo' sure. But the Lord say he won't put more on us than we can stand. If we can't take it, he'll be right there beside us giving stren'th we didn't know we had."

Mr. Buckley died in 1986, at the age of ninety-seven. He spent his last years helping to found a new church in Menden-hall. He said, "I want a church where anyone is welcome, no matter their color, a church where people pray and expect answers to their prayers. I want a church where people are known by their love for one another." By his example, Mr. Buckley showed what kind of church he wanted.

The Great Reversal

"What doesn't destroy me makes me stronger," Martin Luther King, Jr., had said. Mr. Buckley's peaceful, wrinkled face seemed to prove it. Like a tough old oak that had weathered thunderstorms, blizzards, and forest fires, Mr. Buckley exuded a quality of strength such as most of us sheltered Americans will never experience. There's something unique about having only God to lean on in times of trial.

After the hours I spent with Mr. Buckley, I finally understood Jesus' strange, paradoxical words in the Beatitudes. I realized that I had always viewed the words "Blessed are the poor . . . those who mourn . . . the meek . . . the persecuted" as a kind of sop Jesus threw to the unfortunates. Well, since you aren't rich, and your health is bad, and your face is wet with tears, HI toss out a few nice phrases and a promise of future rewards. Maybe you'll feel better. But some of the promises are expressed in present tense—"theirs is the kingdom"—and my meetings with poor blacks in Mississippi showed me how the poor and the oppressed can indeed be blessed. Mr. Buckley demonstrated a

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