Jim Govatos: Questioning God after a tragedy

I think all of Winter Park was rocked by the recent tragedy at KinderCare on Goldenrod Road, which claimed the life of 4-year-old Lily Quintus and injured many others. Such things just shouldn't happen to children.

As the police try to sort out all the variables of what caused such a tragic accident many people are probably asking larger questions of causation, as in "How could God (if there is a God) allow something like this to happen?" or "Where was God when all this was happening?"

These are not uncommon questions when something horrific happens, especially to children. It just doesn't seem fair that innocent lives should be taken. And it doesn't seem fair that parents should have to endure such a loss. Not fair at all.

Yet that is the world in which we live. It is a world that offers many joys, such as beautiful sunrises, delicious foods, and loving relationships. But because it is imperfect, we also encounter disease, broken relationships, and tragedies such as the KinderCare accident.

The good news of Easter is that God entered into the very center of human suffering to comfort us and redeem our pain. People tell me that losing a child is one of the worst possible experiences in life. Even though I know what it is like to lose a wife at a young age, I don't know what it is like to lose a child. But God does. When Jesus died so unfairly on the cross, he dragged the heart of God through the morass of human suffering. God himself knows the pain of a parent's grief. With that sort of experience, he has the authority to comfort us in our grief, not from an armchair, but from the very heart of grief itself.

So when a mother or father cries out in grief, God can truly say, "I know how it feels."

But the Easter story doesn't end there. It is not just about the ignominious death of Jesus on Good Friday, but about the resurrection to new life on Easter Sunday. Now you might say, that is where Jesus' story is so different from ours: He was raised three days later. Have you ever stopped to think that even though Jesus was raised from the dead, the disciples still didn't get to keep him? He ascended into heaven 40 days later. So even though the resurrection was real, the day-to-day contact with Jesus wasn't lasting. There was still a loss.

Yet it was a loss based in new life and that made the loss bearable. It made the loss bearable because the disciples knew Jesus was OK and they had the hope that they would be OK without him as well. Never the same as when they walked the hills of Galilee with him, but OK nonetheless. And as they lived out their lives without his physical presence, they discovered more life than they ever thought possible even as most of them faced early deaths. Believers throughout the centuries have discovered the very same thing, and that is why they have been able to respond to tragedy with incredible forgiveness and grace.

There is life in the midst of death if only we will look for it in the one who conquered death. And if we grab hold of that life, we are in a much better position to comfort the KinderCare family and any others who suffer grief. In reflecting on the flow of comfort in his own life, St. Paul wrote:

“All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is our merciful Father and the source of all comfort. He comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others. When they are troubled, we will be able to give them the same comfort God has given us.” 2 Corinthians 1:3-4 (NLT)

We don't comfort through worn-out clichés or awkward silences, but through a deep connection with the hard-won comfort of God who know what it is like to grieve deeply. May we all have a taste of that comfort this Easter.