It was the door to my son’s car. It fell off.
Well, almost.
They (our son, David, his wife, Kayla, their two-year-old twins, and Stella, aged four) had visited us for the weekend. They had the kids’ toys, “sleep sacks,” and all their luggage packed tightly in their car and were ready to head home.
Then, just before getting in the vehicle, the car door came off its tracks. All our efforts to shut the door proved useless. After a considerable amount of wrangling with it, the car window broke, shattering glass, rendering any semblance of safe travel impossible. The situation had quickly turned from difficult to impossible.
It was a microcosm of what life can be like.
Ever notice what we do mentally when some unexpected problem pokes its gnarly head in our direction?
We automatically ask, “Why did that happen?”
And then we often continue with, “If only they,” usually referring to someone other than ourselves, whom we are apt to accuse.
Like the quip where the guy says, “I don’t always lose stuff, but when I do, it’s because my wife moved it.”
When we can find no logical explanation, and no one is available to blame, we look to God as the One who is ultimately behind the problem.
If the circumstances are adverse, for instance, a crisis greater than an unhinged car door, we might ask, “Why did God let this happen?” And if it’s something that hurts us personally, we might conclude, “God must have it in for me.”
The image we project is of a God who is waiting to make our lives miserable. At its deepest level, it’s an image of a God who does not like us.
Nicky Gumbel tells the story of British writer Adrian Plass, author of The Sacred Diary of Adrian Plass, Aged 37 3/4.
“This seemingly insubstantial fact revolutionised my life,” Plass wrote. “I became a Christian when I was sixteen years old, but it wasn’t until I was thirty-seven that I absorbed an essential truth. God is nice and he likes me.”
Too many people, Gumbel observed, think that God is not that nice and that He doesn’t like us that much.
So, when some unpleasant event occurs, we imagine God laughing at our plight, “I’m here. And I gotcha.”
It’s an unfortunate image of God, since that’s not the picture of God we meet in the Scriptures.
One of my favorite passages in the Bible comes from Isaiah, where the prophet speaks for God: “This is what the Lord says—” said Isaiah, words sure to get an audience’s attention: “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior” (Isaiah 43:2-3).
What follows is my favorite part, “You are precious…in my sight” (43:4).
Trouble will come, but God will guide us through it if we let Him lead us.
Process that for a moment. We are precious in God’s sight. You can even substitute your name where it says, “You,” because it’s true: you really are precious in God’s sight.
When my son’s car door fell off, we stood wide-eyed, asking, “Why? What happened? What will we do?”
But thankfully, instead of wringing our hands and shaking our fists to the heavens, we took a deep breath, stepped away from the situation, and came up with a plan.
Then we thanked God because it could have been worse: it could have occurred at a rest stop, stranding my loved ones. Instead, they were able to drive our car safely home.
When bad things happen, even if they’re not catastrophic, it doesn’t mean God is out to make us miserable.
God is with us, not only in those trials that shake us to our core, but in the small stuff, too, like when a car door is unhinged. God’s love for us is the same in every circumstance. After all, as Isaiah reminds us, we are precious in God’s sight.