Accidents and Emergencies

Not to be all melodramatic or anything but I’ve been thinking a bit about accidents, pain and suffering recently after seeing a pan of boiling water tip down my three year old daughter’s chest. The usual questions really. Why does pain exist? Why do people who really don’t deserve it get hurt? How do we reconcile the reality of pain, suffering and general tragedy with the existence of a loving God? Not small questions, I’m sure you’ll agree, and one’s that I’m not really qualified to answer, so I’ll just leave you with some of my thoughts and struggles on the subject.

Shortly after the accident I had a jarring realisation that proved difficult to come to terms with. I often acknowledge in my prayers that God loves us much more than we can ever love each other, but the shock of seeing my precious girl in such intense pain, that I could do nothing to prevent, made me wonder if I truly believed my assertions. After all, God was there wasn’t He? And we weren’t being negligent, unloving parents. So why did it happen? If we love our daughter enough that we would do everything in our power to prevent her being hurt in such a way why can’t God, who has all the power in the world, prevent something that is in his power to prevent? Or to put it another way: does God really love us at all? And does He really love our precious daughter? After all, how can someone that is hard to see, feel or imagine love someone as vibrant and as tangible as the little girl in front of me? I gaze at my daughter and I realise that I don’t want anything like this to ever happen to her again. When God looks at her does He think the same?

And then I think that in all my thinking I’m certain I must be missing something really quite fundamental and profound. It’s less than two weeks since the accident and her burn is healing far quicker than I could ever have hoped or imagined. She’s not troubled by it and hasn’t really been significantly troubled by it since it happened. She’s certainly more wary of heat now but not, I seem to think, in an unhealthy way. She’s getting on with life as normal: playing, growing and being cheeky to her parents, much like any other three year old. Surely God must be involved in that in some way.

There have been so many faithful people praying for her over the last few days too. I couldn’t prove, without doubt, to a sceptic that these prayers have had a positive effect, but the amazingly positive results certainly suggest that they just might have done. After all, everything could very well have been a whole lot worse. I guess there’s a measure of faith in this whole business and the funny thing about faith is that it doesn’t stand up to scientific scrutiny because there’s no S. I. unit to quantify it. I can’t prove that prayer works, I can’t prove the God exists and I can’t prove that God loves my daughter. But these circumstances, this life, these struggles that turn into joys and these dark times that are suddenly flooded with intense rays of light, might just suggest that all these uncertainties are actually truths.

Do I really believe that God loves my daughter? Am I able to fully trust that He will guide her, treasure her and champion her for the rest of her life (and long after I’m gone)? I don’t think I can prove it but I do think I’ve had enough experience of His love and grace to have faith that it’s true.

In my traditional rambling way I realise that I haven’t really touched on the questions I started to ask at the beginning. I haven’t said anything about why pain might exist or why innocent people suffer, or even about how God sees it all. I am, however, comforted by the fact that there are plenty of good books with more grounded and more thoroughly reasoned views on these matters than I could ever hope to come up with: Phillip Yancey’s written some, and C S Lewis, and Amy Orr-Ewing, amongst many others. They might be worth checking out. (In fact, I might just have to dig one or two of them out again myself.)

Till next time...