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Where is God when your world falls apart?

When your pleas seem unheard, when the horror seems to increase, when God Himself seems to have withdrawn into the darkness,

where do we find God?

Meet Calla.

Calla is a nine year old girl full of sparkle and light, full of love and joy.

Until now.Until now when she is fighting for her life against the darkness of aggressive, rapidly growing tumors in her brain.

Where is God when your world falls apart?

Here.

He is right here.

Emmanuel.

God with us.

Jesus promised us crosses. We are to expect them.

And He also promised us empty tombs in the end.

It may not happen until the end, but He gave His word that He would make those tombs empty again.

So we must remember.

This is beyond hard when your baby girl is fighting for her life, yet Calla’s parents, Ben and Crystal, are also fighting hard.

Fighting hard to remember,

to remember that God broke into time to show us that the empty tomb will always follow the cross.

In the words of Corrie ten Boom from the hell of a Nazi concentration camp: No matter how deep our darkness, he is deeper still.

And if that were not enough, if the promise of the rising sun melting away these sorrows like the morning dew were not enough,

He also promised to be with us through it all.

This is what Calla’s parents are fighting to shine into their darkness –

that God is good and He is with us.

When it feels as though life is beating you into the ground, when the weight of your burden does not allow you to rise from your bed in the morning, when you cannot carry your cross for one more step, you can know that He is here with you, carrying your cross with you, taking your burden on Himself.

Every tear we shed becomes His tear. He may not yet wipe them away, but He makes them His. Would we rather have our own dry eyes, or His tear-filled ones?

He came to us. He is here with us. We can be certain of Emmanuel in all circumstances.

Job learned this in a very real way.

When he wanted to know why his world was burning to ashes around him, God showed Job the wonders of the zoological world and the stunning beauties of the galaxies and told him, I did this!

When Job wanted, even demanded, an answer from God, God gave him something much more beautiful than a simple answer.

He gave Job the same answer that He gives to all who ask, to all who seek: Himself.

And when we declare all of this – His goodness and power, His love and His with us,

then God is glorified and our hearts are nourished.

If He does not heal all our broken bones and loves and lives now, He comes into them and is broken, like bread, and we are nourished.

Our Bread of Life, broken for us, will nourish us. He will never leave us.

Will you join me in praying for Calla and her family? Pray for a miracle of healing to bring God all the glory, of course, and also pray for peace and joy and a tangible sense of God’s presence in the middle of this darkness to bring God all the glory.

I have only done this once before in my eight years of writing in this space, but would you consider giving a little to help my friends, as they wait? The waiting is so hard, especially when you have two other children back home in another state, especially when you must leave your work to wait with your girl. You can give by clicking here. If you want to stay updated on Calla and the ways in which God is being glorified by her family, click here.

Thank you for praying. And may the peace of God be with you wherever you may be.

On Another’s Sorrow 
by William Blake

Can I see anothers woe,
And not be in sorrow too.
Can I see anothers grief,
And not seek for kind relief.

Can I see a falling tear
And not feel my sorrows share,
Can a father see his child,
Weep, nor be with sorrow fill’d.

Can a mother sit and hear,
An infant groan an infant fear—
No no never can it be.
Never never can it be.

And can he who smiles on all
Hear the wren with sorrows small,
Hear the small birds grief & care
Hear the woes that infants bear—

And not sit beside the nest
Pouring pity in their breast,
And not sit the cradle near
Weeping tear on infants tear.

And not sit both night & day,
Wiping all our tears away.
O! no never can it be.
Never never can it be.

He doth give his joy to all.
He becomes an infant small.
He becomes a man of woe
He doth feel the sorrow too.

Think not, thou canst sigh a sigh,
And thy maker is not by.
Think not thou canst weep a tear,
And thy maker is not near.

O! he gives to us his joy,
That our grief he may destroy
Till our grief is fled & gone
He doth sit by us and moan.

All photographs not of Calla and her family are copyright Made Sacred 2019

Quotes are from Peter Kreeft