Crisis Hotline

I was praying yesterday for the miners who were trapped in the West Virginia coal mine.

Coming from a journalism background, I understand the importance of getting various perspectives on a story. I bounced back and forth between CNN, MSNBC, and Fox during this tragedy. Much of the footage came from this small country church where the families of the miners were staying, praying, singing hymns, and so forth. Much was made of the “miracle” for which they were praying. When the news broke at about 11:45 last night that 12 miners were alive, there was a lot of praising going on. Then, through some completely monumental screw-up that I cannot even fathom, I awoke to the news this morning that there had been “miscommunication,” and in fact, there had been only 1 survivor. 12 were dead.

Horrific.

Yesterday afternoon, I was praying for those miners and their families. It occurred to me that all too often God is our “crisis hotline.” We believe that He’s up there, but we can’t seem to make the time to talk to Him until something horrific has happened, either in our lives, or in the world around us.

CNN posted an interview with one of the family members, who said that the event had shaken her faith in God, that she didn’t even know if there was a God any longer. They made a big deal out of the tag line they took from her words, “a miracle taken away.”

Then why in the world were we calling out to Him in the first place?

I mean, cognitively speaking, if we’re talking to Him, then we believe He’s up there, right? And almost everyone does call on Him when all hell breaks loose, don’t we? So much for the illusion of atheism. But then when it turns out that He didn’t spare us from our disaster, we choose to say that we don’t think He’s up there any longer. Sour grapes. He wouldn’t allow that to happen, right? He wouldn’t put us through that if He were a God of love like we believe He is, right?

God said, “I will have mercy on whomever I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whomever I will have compassion” (Romans 9:15, NKJV). Don’t misunderstand me, I’m far from being a Calvinist, and I’m not attempting to overplay the sovereignty card. But sometimes, God permits evil to happen. We don’t understand that. We can’t understand that. The “problem of evil,” as seminarians like to call it, is one of the great apologetic issues of the human condition. We haven’t, and we won’t, be able to solve it. I’m not even going to attempt to do so here. I will say that, as I’ve carefully attempted to unpack this issue in the past, it does always come back to a loving God in my mind. But there is no suffering worse than existential suffering. Never is it more painful than when it comes to your doorstep.

So when this woman said what she said, it brought tears to my eyes.

Because I can understand her words spilling from her broken heart. I didn’t sidestep, expecting lightening to strike her. Given time, she’ll unpack this for herself. She’ll be bitter for a while, of course. God is big enough to handle that. He’s patient. And He reveals Himself through the most tragic of circumstances at times. I know that tears came to His eyes, as well, when she said this. I’m begging Him to love on those families, as I know He will, during this time.

And it’s my hope that He will not just be their crisis hotline, but that they will remain with Him in order to get through this, and dependent upon Him in the future. It is that closeness, that blind faith, that effort of believing even when the belief surpasses logic, that keeps us close to Him.

Even when the horror comes to our doorstep.