In Gods eyes tragedies can be a reflection of love

​A dear friend reached out to me last night asking for prayer. Her college roommate's parents and sister had been in a car accident. The mother died. The father wasn't expected to make it. The sister was awake and talking, but was pregnant at the time of the accident and lost the baby.

I read this prayer request with great sadness. The loss of it all, compounded by the joy of the Christmas season instantly turned sad.

So I gieve and pray with and for my friend and that entire family. My prayer is somehow they will receive a peace that surpasses all understanding.

Because the reality is there is no way of ever understanding tragedy at our mere human level. Peace can never be found through our own understanding of life and it's events. It has to come from a much higher plane.

I listened to a song on the way in to work this morning. "A Strange Way to Save The World." The song expresses what I've always wondered about. Of all the ways God could have chosen to save the world - why voluntarily use the death of his own son? I have two sons, so I can agree with the song writer - it's a very strange way to pull this thing off, God.

But because I have two sons I can also understand on some level how much God loves me - that he would indeed choose to sacrifice his own son in the name of that love.

So I don't get tradegies like my friend's family is facing. Not at all, at least not in a way I can explain them. But I do know this: God has used his own family tragedy to say I love you, Keith. In spite of my many faults and failures, God saw the murder of his own son as a proper way to let me know just how much. Some days that's a heavy load of love to carry.

In our eyes tragedies like the one I'm praying over for my friend are seen in the darkness of sadness and destructiveness. Yet, in God's eyes, those same tragedies are a reflection of love. I don't get it. I don't. But I do find great peace in it.

A peace that definitely surpasses all understanding.