I was on the phone last week with a pastor friend and he began telling me about something that was happening in his congregation. It seems that a tragic accident occurred involving a 17-year-old girl. She was a student at Calvary Chapel High School, and her family attends the church.

The girl, Allie, had been at a function that evening and needed a ride home, so one of her friends, Chuck, volunteered to drive her. As they were on the way, he lost control of the car and crashed. He managed to climb out, unhurt, but she was in bad shape. Chuck, of course, was distraught. Someone called the police and as they waited for the ambulance to get there, some of the other teens who they had been with earlier, arrived. They gathered around Chuck and began praying together for God’s strength and help. The police who were on the scene at the time were brought to tears by the demonstration of love and care that these kids had for one another. When Allie’s mom arrived she couldn’t take it all in. Understandably, she was grief stricken and in shock. It is hard for me to even imagine the sickening pain she must have felt. I don’t know the anguish of losing a child but as a father, my heart, ached.  

At the hospital, both sets of parents were present. They embraced one another. There was no talk of lawsuits, or violent threats of revenge; just a deep, shared sadness, love, and support. This was a horrible accident—who can be blamed? As tragic as this is, God’s people are comforted by, and able to comfort each other with, the knowledge that He is always in control of their lives.

I was in tears as my friend relayed this story to me. I can’t imagine a more difficult and heart wrenching ordeal to live through than what this family was enduring. But God sometimes calls us to seasons of suffering, times when we feel trapped in a trial, and pinned beneath the pain. Why? I cannot say. But, I do know one thing for certain: in the midst of those times we will find our strength and comfort in His Presence, alone. Corrie Ten Boom once said, “You'll never know that God is all you need, until God is all you have." Indeed, God’s grace is as a bottomless well, filled with wonders that we would never discover if not for the trials that occasionally plunge us into its depths.

My friend continued by saying that Allie had a dream two weeks prior to this accident that she related to all her friends. Apparently, she dreamt that night that she was in a terrible car accident and that the person she was with died as a result, but she lived. Immediately, the thought crossed my mind, “I wonder if she had prayed; let it be me who dies instead of the other person.” Who knows?

But that’s not all, apparently three weeks prior to Allie’s death, her father had received a phone call from Bethany Services (an adoption agency in California). He learned that in his past, before becoming a Christian, he had unknowingly fathered another child. The woman put the baby up for adoption, and now, out of the clear blue, the daughter he didn’t know he had wanted to meet him. They spoke on the phone and he learned that she had been adopted by a Christian couple, and as a teenager had attended Calvary Chapel High School in California. She was older now with a child of her own. When she received the news of Allie’s death a few weeks later, she came to be with her father at the funeral.

Sometimes it is easy to forget that God is holding the very fabric of our lives in His hands. But then, at other times we get a little glimpse of the intricate pattern He is weaving throughout our days here on earth. This father buried one precious daughter, and met another daughter and grandchild for the very first time, on the same day. No writer, no matter how talented, could ever have imagined such a detailed set of circumstances. Only God, the “Author and Finisher of our faith” has the wisdom and power to bring together the individual strands of our lives, in such poignant and extraordinary ways.

Please keep Allie’s family, friends, and church family in prayer as they grieve her loss. And pray especially for the young man, Chuck, who was driving the car that night. May God grant him peace, and comfort him by His Presence.

In Him,

Lloyd

“My times are in Your hand…” (Psalm 31:15)