God's Timing is Perfect

So last Wednesday, I had a pretty incredible day all around, but I’m only going to focus on one part of it right now.

I have been struggling with the idea of suffering in the world and it had been more difficult in this last week. As a couple of the interns and I sat on the roof on Wednesday, we walked about the reasons for suffering, but we never really came up with anything that was comforting for us.

I hadn’t been feeling well, so when the others left to go play soccer, I stayed up on the roof to rest. I picked up one of the books that my youth pastor had given me; Timothy Keller’s The Reason for God. This book argues many of the common arguments for why the God of the bible cannot exist and refutes them. (Read it sometime. It’s good).

The particular chapter I was on was talking about the argument of how the God of the bible could not exist in a world with so much suffering. Needless to say, considering my mood that morning, I was curious. The particular chapter had multiple convincing arguments, but there was one in particular that I hadn’t ever heard before; that our suffering now will increase our joy in the future. Keller used the example of how when we lose something (and we think it’s gone forever) that thing will be loved and much more appreciated if it’s found again. We only truly appreciate something when it has been lost and then found again.

I thought it was really interesting and I had never heard that take on it before. I took the book back to my room and set it on my top bunk. As I turned around, I saw something glinting under my bed. It was a ring and I bent down to pick it up, thinking that it might have been the ring that one of my friends had mentioned that they lost. But it wasn’t. It was my ring. My class ring.

I had lost this ring in Florida, on a school trip a few months ago. I had been sure I was never going to see it again. There was literally no way that this ring could have gotten from Florida to Guatemala short of the power of God. The clothes I brought here, along with the suitcase, none of them were anything I had had with me in Florida.

It just cemented what I had just read in Keller’s book. I had been sure I was never going to see this ring again, and when I found it, I almost cried. The ring reminded me of how God can use suffering ultimately for His good, and also how His timing it perfect.