To Move Through Our Adversities

I love to read. As a bishop, I am finding myself with little time to read as much as I like, so summer travels always include a pile of books. This summer, one book I read was by “Brighter By The Day: Waking Up to New Hopes and Dreams” by Robin Roberts, the co-anchor of Good Morning America. It is a wonderful devotional book, grounded in Roberts’ faith as a Christian. Roberts has been quoted as crediting her parents with instilling in her the “"three 'D's: Discipline, Determination, and 'De Lord.'

In the book, Roberts is honest not only about her triumphs but also her failures and adversities, including serious life-threatening medical diagnoses: “We may not fully understand why catastrophe has befallen us, and that’s okay. Our job isn’t to comprehend it. It’s to redeem it for good.”

That line jumped out at me. I don’t believe God inflicts horrible things on us. I don’t believe God sends fire or flood or famine or disease. A loving God wouldn’t try or treat us in that way. Being a human and walking and growing in the world leaves us open personal and natural disasters, disease, and being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

To focus on trying to understand “Why did this happen to me” can tie us in knots and leave us frustrated, depressed, and disempowered. Instead, where do we find God companioning us through the catastrophe? Who is walking with us as we move through grief? Who is cheering us on as we take another step towards sobriety? How is God offering us sustenance as we face the brokenness of our lives?

The God who rose Jesus from the dead makes plain to us that this is the God who truly makes all things new again. Not even the crushing blow of death can prevent God’s love from bursting from whatever tomb catastrophe has tried to bury us in. Ours is not to ask “Why did this happen to me?” Instead, turning from whatever may have befallen us, how do we move through it to the other side? How do we find the healing path? How do we integrate what we have experienced to make us even more than we were before, increase our capacity for compassion, enrich us for deeper empathy, and help us be more tender with others who are going through their own hard times?

May you find comfort and hope from these words from the Psalms: “Weeping may endure for a night, but rejoicing comes in the morning.”