It is an odd thing to see the path of a tornado.
Thick tree trunks mangled like broken twigs, branches naked. Piles of rubble. Houses leveled. Whole neighborhoods obliterated, while others stood eerily serene, seemingly untouched by the swirling dispenser of fate. Our family visited in late October and, after five months, Joplin, Missouri has made enormous strides in its efforts to rebuild after the catastrophic storm laid waste.
And still…
Nathan’s aunt and uncle had arranged for us to see the damage while we were in town. Our two car caravan –me with Nathan’s aunt and cousin, the other with Nathan, the kids, and Nathan’s uncle– took us though the path of the May 22nd tornado, to the point of initial touchdown. For about half a mile on either side of the road you could see its affect, and though I knew the answer in my mind, there was a disconnect with what my eyes beheld. The ruin that lay in two parts on either side of the street was actually a whole, the result of a monstrous cyclone that roared through the city. A mile-wide wall of utter destruction.
Businesses.
Homes.
Schools.
A hospital.
Devastated.
I knew, days before we took this tour, that it would deeply affect my children, Caleb especially. I knew there would be questions and fears and discussions. And I wrestled with whether or not I should just let Nathan go while I stayed behind with the kids. But tragedy doesn’t wait until we are old enough, or when we are ready. I decided that seeing the wreckage and talking through the questions and the fears would allow a safe place for Caleb to experience sadness and grief and anxiety with someone that loved him and could help him process what he was seeing and feeling. It would expose him in a sheltered way to pain and sorrow, not to fall into despair but to bring forth compassion.
When our excursion finished I rejoined my family and, sliding into the passenger seat, came to find that Caleb had indeed been impacted by what he had seen. During the drive Caleb had asked his daddy:
“Did God make the tornado?”
Did He do it?
This all-mighty, all-powerful God who created all things, who made the animals and the trees and the people, did He do this too?
Isn’t this the question that burns within us when we witness injustice or behold destruction or confront death? Did HE do it? And if He didn’t do it then He certainly must have allowed it. My own difficult question was then unearthed from the recesses of my heart. Why God? Whatever the crisis, my flesh wants to demand from God where He was and that He be held accountable.
Nathan had answered, “I don’t presume to know whether God made the tornado or if it just formed out of the bad weather. But I know that God saved a lot of people from dying that day.”
It was true. A high school graduation was scheduled the evening the tornado hit. A week before the graduation was to take place on the campus it was decided to move the ceremony to a local community college because of the great number of people that would be in attendance. By God’s grace, the high school that would have been filled to overflowing was empty when the storm utterly destroyed it.
I unbuckled my seat belt and climbed to the back of the van where Caleb was sitting. The shadows of evening rested on him as he gazed out of the window, contemplating.
“So you saw where the tornado messed things up.”
“Yeah.”
“I heard you asked if God made the tornado.”
“Yeah. Did He?”
My mind and heart were roiling. My unbelief crashing into the very foundations of my faith: Did He make the tornado? Did He allow it? Is God good? How could a good God let bad things happen? My thoughts were swimming out of control and I was sinking beneath the weight of their hopelessness.
Yet in the raging war of belief and unbelief, in the seconds between Caleb’s question and my response, Holy Spirit ministered to me in gentleness and compassion. Where knowledge and faith collided, Grace intervened. And in the same way I had wanted to process with Caleb the tragedy we beheld through the lens of Love, so Holy Spirit wanted to do with me.
God’s Word says He is good. His Word is truth. God is not a man that He would lie. There is no darkness in Him. But because His ways are higher than my own, my finite mind grapples with even the tiniest breadth of the knowledge of God. His Sovereign Will escapes my understanding at the deepest heart level more often than not. Yet I began to realize that I was not wrestling with God and His choices. Sin. Pain. Sorrow. Death. These were not His intentions nor inventions. They came from somewhere else, someone else.
In that moment, I gave the only answer I could give honestly. And as the words spilled out of my mouth, from my heart to my son’s, the explanation God had rendered through me was doing a work in me.
“God never wanted this. He never wanted storms or tornados or sickness or death. He never wanted those bad things to happen to anybody. In fact, when God made the world, He made a perfect place with no tornados and no sickness and no death. That is what God made. That’s what He intended. Because God loved His people and He didn’t want anything bad for them, only good things. But something happened. One day a man made a bad choice. He decided he would disobey God. And even though it was only one bad choice, only one little choice, it allowed sin to come into the world. So even though that man made a bad choice, it affected every one and every thing on earth. Do you know what that man’s name was?”
“No.”
“His name was Adam.”
I could visibly see Caleb make the connection.
Oh. This was that Adam.
I watched my son begin to understand for the first time the relationship between sin and death. This abstract concept of sin —the story of a man and a woman, a snake and a fruit and a garden—became concrete. Of course I understood this truth with my head. But not with my heart. And for the first time I, too, really began to understand that the root of evil in this world is not from God at all but from the enemy of my soul, who lies and thieves, destroys and kills. Satan, who would twist truth and propagate deception so that Eve and Adam, Caleb and I and everyone would believe that God is not loving, faithful, or true, that God is not good. The Deceiver would go so far as to convince mankind that our thoughts and behaviors have no consequences. And we so far as to believe him.
It is one thing to be confronted with a single act of sin. It is quite another to recognize it’s consequences, spanning miles and even time. A tornado-devastated city. Human trafficking. War-torn nations. Broken families. Broken hearts. To see evidence of this ancient “bad choice” was a striking reminder for me:
God is not responsible for my bad choices…
…I am.
And my choices, and the choices of every one who lives or has ever lived, have consequences, lasting ones. How long ago did Adam sin and yet we all still feel the sting?
“And terrible pain came into God’s heart. His children hadn’t just broken the one rule; they had broken God’s heart. They had broken their wonderful relationship with Him. And now He knew everything else would break. God’s creation would start to unravel, come undone, and go wrong. From now on everything would die –even though it was all supposed to last forever…sin had come into God’s perfect world. And it would never leave…in another story it would all be over and that would have been THE END.
But not in this Story.
God loved His children too much to let the story end there. Even though He knew He would suffer, God had a plan—a magnificent dream…in spite of everything God would love his children –with a Never Stopping, Never Giving Up, Always and Forever Love…
God whispered a promise to Adam and Eve: “It will not always be so! I will come and rescue you! I’ll get rid of the sin and the dark and the sadness you let in here. I’m coming back for you!” And He would. One day God Himself would come.” (Pp 33-36 from The Jesus Storybook Bible by Sally Lloyd-Jones)
Out of depths of love I cannot fathom, despite sin, and our constant tendency towards it, Mercy offered His redemptive gift. Though He wasn’t responsible for our actions or their results, God intervened. He humbled Himself in a garment of flesh, as a helpless babe. He walked a lonely road of truth. He came to understand our struggles, our grief, and our pain. He became a man of sorrows so that we could have the hope of joy. He bore the punishment of sin so that we could taste freedom. He suffered death so that we could live. And He overcame Satan so that we could more than overcome.
There, in the back of a minivan in Mid-West USA, in the midst of a devastated community, I was overwhelmed once again by the extravagant gift of Grace. From Eden to Joplin, indeed across our wounded world, God never abandoned us to the brokenness and hopelessness that sin wrought upon the earth.
There are things that happen that I will not understand, questions that will not be fully answered while I am here on this earth. But I know that my God is big enough to hear my frustrations and accusations, however unfounded, because at the core of my being I am not really frustrated with Him but the result of what sin has done to people. And at His core, so is God. And that is why in His goodness, in His great love, He became the remedy to sin and the answer to our desperate cry for a Savior.
Forgive me for my incomplete understanding of Your mercies. Continue to expose the lies of the enemy that I believe as truth. Reveal to me, more and more, the truth of who You are. Oh, the lengths You went to for the sake of Love! Jesus, thank you for taking on the weight of sin that there would be hope for all. You were, You are, and You forever will be our beautiful answer.
