What's Love Got to Do With It?

“If you live far enough away from trouble, trouble will never find you.” So says Henry Smith’s father in Gary D. Schmidt’s Newbery Award winning novel, Trouble. Of course, when Henry’s older brother is hit by a car and eventually dies, Henry must reevaluate his father’s words. He and his brother had planned to climb Maine’s Mount Katahdin together, but now, Henry musters the courage to proceed with their plans, partly as a tribute, but mostly “to learn how to live with trouble,” terrified as he is to face this challenge alone. Later, Henry is in the hospital, having escaped death himself while on Mount Katahdin. Contemplating all he has been through, he says, “The world is trouble and grace. That’s all there is.”

In last week’s Sunday school lesson we read and discussed two passages where trouble’s results were favorable, but how should Christians react when the outcome is a sad one, despite much faith and prayer? Yesterday we attended the funeral of a 41 year old father of four who had been pressing toward the goal of a heart transplant for 6 months before succumbing to complications related to the transplant itself. Hundreds of friends and relatives are still reeling at the devastating results experienced by a Christian family buoyed up by hope and prayer for so long. We just received an email from the daddy of the heart transplant recipient. He said that though God did not touch his son directly in terms of a complete healing, his family felt that God had communicated with them, fed them, and ministered to them through all of us in cyberspace or in person, by the giving of our support and prayers. God had shown His face through us, and that by sharing in their burden, they were better able to carry it.

Some Christian’s believe that their faith shields them from calamity, but rabbit’s foot theology will always let us down. Jesus’s love and example won’t. Love will never disappoint, and God’s love is always visible when we come together to share our joys or sorrows in a Sunday school class, on a blog, when we pray together, or when we are gathered together to honor anyone, dead or alive. As the rector at the funeral said yesterday, “When there is love in the house, God is there.”

When trouble knocks at your door, do you think it’s God’s doing? Do you think He allows trouble for a purpose, that there is method in His madness, that trouble happens and God’s grace gets you through it, or that there is another reason why bad things happen to good people? Any thoughts?

PS. I just noticed that Jim Somerville's latest post "Vending Machine Prayers" is about this same subject, and so interesting. Check it out here!