What If?

That's the question we will ask on Christmas Eve ... What if?  It is a good question but tonight I want to approach this question from a vastly different direction than you might expect.  Here goes ... what if God can be trusted?

I ask this question on an evening when I have shared some difficult news, anger and tears with some of my faithful during the past few days.  And I ask this question remembering one of the most amazing Christmas miracles I have ever experienced.

In the hustle and business of the Christmas season one of my member's 6-year old son got off the school bus and was promptly run over by an SUV.   The driver was in too much of a hurry to slow down.  A woman prayed for Chase at the scene.  A sister claimed she sent an angel to accompany Chase on his scary trip in the helicopter. Chase (the boy) was airlifted to Pensacola and when his mother arrived she saw her son with tire tracks across his back.  Three days of diagnostics, tests, poking and probing yielded a clear diagnosis ... Chase had a bruise and some soreness but there was absolutely nothing else wrong with him.

How and why was Chase healed?  Why have others not received that healing? Why did illness visit our family when we are getting ready for Christmas events?  Why did friends die this year?  Why is my father no longer with us?  Why did other friends receive such great news and diagnosis?  What if, in the midst of all of these events, God can be trusted to sort things out in a perfect way?

I think this question and (at least my answer) is why one of my favorite hymns at memorial services is "Now Thank We All Our God."  Here are some of the words ...

Now thank we all our God, with heart and hands and voices,
Who wondrous things has done, in Whom this world rejoices;
Who from our mothers’ arms has blessed us on our way
With countless gifts of love, and still is ours today.

The song reminds us we are "on our way" from one place to another.  God can be trusted to be our guide on that trek and to get us to our destination perfectly.  Whether the world throws us something our body can't handle, whether God answers a healing prayer with a miraculous "yes" or whether His bigger picture gives me an answer I really don't like, I am sure of one thing.  I can trust God ... completely, eternally and joyfully.  Randy