We have our little lives lived so nicely and then comes the great disruption. Or so it appears. But it is very real, and so hard and painful. And where is God? ◊ 

I took my beautiful wife of 42 years to the local emergency room (ER) this week for some sudden and acute mental processing issues. The scans and tests are still in process and status and prognosis will hopefully soon be fully determined by all the neurologists caring for her.

Our family is in shock and like all the 10 little grandchildren are at various levels of understanding Why is Grandma in the hospital?

God only knows. And the rest of us are left to wonder, ponder, and process the unthinkable in a context of a God-filled life rocked with man-filled questions.

Praying for Outcomes?
Of course we are all praying for Debbie and for her full recovery. The perfect outcome is the return to perfect health and normalcy. And God can do that. And God has done that throughout human history. We all know the anecdotal stories of healings and recoveries and wonderful resolutions to problems and tragedies.

We lived that out long ago with our own daughter in her ski accident story at age 9 (see Biblical Viewpoint, 3/9/18, 22 Years Ago).

Yes, God is good and does good things. Sometimes, it seems. But actually, God is good and does good things, all the time. It’s all a matter of perspective.

• God took Adam’s sin and ultimately rectified it in the most uncanny way.
• God took Abraham’s great-grandson Joseph’s terrible plight in prison and brought deliverance for an entire growing family.
• Joseph’s descendants fell into cruel slavery and God brought them a deliverer in Moses.
• The descendants of Moses’ generation fell into deep disobedience yet God’s hand preserved and restored them for His purposes.
• God’s selected leaders Saul, David, Solomon, et. al., sinned greatly yet God brought goodness and restoration in the long term.
• God’s prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, et. al. suffered greatly while delivering harsh but prophetic words that were fulfilled but not without great trauma in their own lives.
• God’s own Jesus, the creator and savior of the cosmos, lived a life of sorrows but obediently fulfilled the destiny that ended in a brutal death but then transformed into a victorious resurrection.

And so we have our little lives and plans so carefully calculated to be lived by good standards of our day. And then the wheels come off, a life goes off the rails – or so it seems – and we panic and scramble, and try to piece it all together.

It’s hard. It’s not easy. It actually doesn’t always quite come back together in the way we would have wanted.

But God does know. And God does care. And God is in it all with us all along the way.

A Husband’s Prayer for His Wife
In my bewilderment nevertheless, here is my prayer for Debbie:

My Lord God, you are sovereign and all-knowing. You are actively doing a good work we can sometimes scarcely fathom in the near and long term. I surrender Debbie to you and all that is going on within and around her. May your Holy Spirit surround her and envelop her heart, mind, body, and soul, with your peace, love, and fullness. You are the great physician who knows your children and numbers all of our days. May your will be clearly done here in this life on earth as it is in heaven. We submit our prayers as believers in the kingdom with hope and assurances of nothing more than your goodness and holiness and love and eternal plans that reach beyond our capacity to understand. Lord God, I humbly submit and petition for Debbie’s full and vibrant life, even for decades more; but for more life of joy and your love in this realm that pales in comparison to what you are preparing for all that know and love you. Thank you for your hand on us. We all continue to seek you and will walk the path you lay before us. I pray this in Jesus’ name and through the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Thank you for your prayers.
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More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. – Romans 5:3-5

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