Tragedy over the Potomac 

An American Airlines jet carrying sixty passengers and four crew members collided with an Army helicopter that apparently flew into its path as it was landing at Ronald Reagan National Airport last night. Officials do not believe there were any survivors of the deadliest US air crash in nearly twenty-four years.

The plane was flying from Wichita, Kansas, to Washington, DC. Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall said the tragedy “can only be described as nothing short of a nightmare.” President Trump stated that he had been “fully briefed on the terrible accident” and added, “May God Bless their souls.”

Sen. Marshall agreed: “My prayer is that God wraps his arms around each and every victim and that he continues to be with their families.”

But if you’re like me, a prayer like that at a time like this can be hard to pray.

“You hid your face; I was dismayed”

My father died of a heart attack at the age of fifty-five. I have been a minister for more than forty years and thus have seen more than my share of death and grief. I know that death comes to all unless the Lord returns first. I know every time I board an airplane that it could be my last time.

But if I dwell on this fact, I might not get on the plane. If I focus when the morning begins on the fact that it might be my last morning, it can be hard to face the day.

So, like David, I move through life thinking tragedy will not come to me: “As for me, I said in my prosperity, ‘I shall never be moved’” (Psalm 30:6). I assume that I will continue to be as secure as I am while I write these words from the safety of my study.

I am not so foolish as to think that I can guarantee such security myself. I know that too much is outside my control, from natural disasters to bad actors to diseases. I have flown into and out of Reagan National Airport several times over the years and taken more flights to more places around the world than I can count, each without tragic incident. But I know that what happened last night could just as easily have happened to me.

So I readily acknowledge that every day that passes in safety is God’s gift and say with David, “By your favor, O Lᴏʀᴅ, you made my mountain stand strong” (v. 7a).

However, if I credit God with the good, I am just as likely as David to blame him for the bad: “You hid your face; I was dismayed” (v. 7b). The Hebrew word translated “dismayed” could be rendered, “I was horrified and terrified.”

This is only logical. If I believe my physician to be responsible for my good health, I feel justified in blaming him when I am sick. If he could accomplish the former, he should be able to prevent the latter. And when sickness comes, I may seek another physician under the assumption that my current doctor is no longer capable of caring for me well.

“So this is what God’s really like”

This is how we so often react with God when tragedy strikes. I know this to be true on a very personal level: my father experienced such atrocities during World War II that he never attended worship again. I have known parents who lost a son or daughter and soon left the church, finding themselves no longer able to worship the God who could have saved their child but did not.

I understand their thinking. If God ever performs a miracle, why not for them? If he ever heals a sick child, why not theirs? If he ever protects travelers from tragedy, why not those flying into Reagan National last night?

I am not aware of any theological reasoning that fully explains innocent suffering. I know we live in a fallen world where suffering results from the Fall (Romans 8:22), but I also know that God sometimes prevents such suffering. I don’t know why he sometimes does and sometimes does not.

Innocent suffering does not persuade me that God cannot exist. Billions of suffering people over the centuries have worshiped various gods without allowing their pain to veto their faith. But it does challenge my belief that God is all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-loving. If he is all three, he knew about last night’s tragedy before it happened, he could have stopped it, and it seems to me that he should have wanted to stop it. But he did not.

My logical assumption is not that he didn’t know or couldn’t have prevented the disaster. It is that, for some reason, he chose not to. What does this say about him?

After C. S. Lewis’s beloved wife died of bone cancer, he wrote:

Not that I am (I think) in much danger of ceasing to believe in God. The real danger is of coming to believe such dreadful things about him. The conclusion I dread is not “So there’s no God after all,” but “So this is what God’s really like. Deceive yourself no longer.”

“Who comforts us in all our affliction”

But it’s not so simple. If we are to blame God for all innocent suffering, mustn’t we credit him for all innocent good? If we blame him every time we experience pain that is not our fault, shouldn’t we thank him every time we experience good that is not our causing?

So I’m back to David’s prayer, crediting God when his “mountain” is “strong” and being “dismayed” when he apparently “hid” his “face” (Psalm 30:7). All I know to do is to do what he did.

In the hard times, I will be honest with my pain and ask my hard questions, knowing that God invites me to “argue it out” with him (a literal translation of Isaiah 1:18). With Paul, I will plead for him to remove my “thorn in the flesh” (2 Corinthians 12:7–8). With Jesus, I will cry, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). With David, I will implore him:

To you, O Lᴏʀᴅ, I cry, and to the Lord I plead for mercy: “What profit is there in my death, if I go down to the pit? . . . Hear, O Lᴏʀᴅ, and be merciful to me! O Lᴏʀᴅ, be my helper!” (Psalm 30:8–10).

In the good times, I will “bless the Lᴏʀᴅ, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits” (Psalm 103:2). I will pray with the prophet, “I will praise your name, for you have done wonderful things” (Isaiah 25:1). I will worship with David:

You have turned for me my mourning into dancing; you have loosed my sackcloth and clothed me with gladness, that my glory may sing your praise and not be silent (Psalm 30:11–12a).

And I will try to remember that because “God is love” (1 John 4:8), he can only want what is best for me. He must weep as I weep (John 11:35) and “walk through the valley of the shadow of death” alongside me (Psalm 23:4), for he promised, “I will never leave you nor forsake you” (Hebrews 13:5). I will continue to believe that his holy and loving character compels him to redeem all he allows, even when I cannot understand such redemption on this side of paradise (cf. 1 Corinthians 13:12).

I will choose to say with Paul, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of all mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction” (2 Corinthians 1:3–4a, my emphasis). And I will try to remember how the verse continues: “so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God” (v. 4b).

“I will give thanks to you forever”

All the while, I will look to the day when I will join David in a world where there is no tragedy and pain but only joy and light as we say together, “O Lᴏʀᴅ my God, I will give thanks to you forever!” (Psalm 30:12b).

On that day,

The dwelling place of God [will be] with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away (Revelation 21:3–4).

Read the words again: “Death shall be no more.”

This is the guarantee of God.