Vantage Point
Coming Through Suffering
Every year our Surviving Tragedy issue is one of our most
popular.
Why? I think it’s because these are always real stories
about real people who have gone through real tragedies … and triumphed!
The message of these true-life experiences is not that God
will keep you from all problems, but that He will bring you through them.
The Book of Job tells the story of a wealthy man who was
“blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil” (1:1, NIV). Yet he was
not impervious to harm. Job, through no fault of his own, went through
catastrophic loss. Calamity and attack took the lives of his children and most
of his possessions.
His immediate reaction? He worshipped God and said, “Naked I
came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart. The Lord gave and the Lord
has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised” (1:21). Verse 22 adds, “In
all this, Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing.” Job held fast even
when his wife said to him, “Are you still holding on to your integrity? Curse
God and die!” (2:9).
From this point, though, Job reacts unevenly, initially
suffering in silence before proclaiming his sorrow. His friends, “miserable
comforters” (16:2), only make his suffering worse.
Through 42 chapters, readers of the Bible find a man with
raw emotions, wrestling with God, the bad counsel of his friends, and his own
identity. Though Job wavers, even disagreeing with God at times, he comes
through spiritually intact and, eventually, better than before.
He repents before God and prays for his friends. “After Job
had prayed for his friends, the Lord made him prosperous again and gave him
twice as much as he had before” (42:10).
In this issue you will read true stories of people who were
not spared suffering, but clung to God and came through in victory with their
faith intact.
Ken Horn
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