People think that if you live a good life that good things will happen to you. And conversely that bad people will have bad things happen to them. So they conclude that if something bad happens to you that you must have done something to deserve it. The account of Job is a resounding NO to this way of thinking. The book of Job tells us he was blameless, upright, feared God and turned away from evil (Job 1:1). Job was innocent. Bad things do happen to good people.
Living life means there are times when truly horrific things will happen to you. Evil touches us all.
For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now. And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body.
Romans 8:22,23
At those times when the unspeakable happens, it is normal to ask God Why?
The answers don't come. So are we left without hope? Never!
1 Timothy 1:1 tells us that Christ Jesus is our hope.*
Romans 12:12 tells us to rejoice in hope, persevere in tribulation and to be devoted to prayer.
While we are living in this world, bad things are going to happen to us, the Redeemed of Christ. We cannot escape evil. We don't understand why. Just as Job didn't understand the shambles he found his life to be in.
I have had, like you, many awful things happen in my life. The longer you live, the more you experience.
I had different reactions to two of the worst events. First when I was 20 years old my mother died suddenly of a heart attack. It set of a chain of family dysfunction and also of sin in my life. I never once doubted the existence of God or His sovereignty. I viewed it as grossly unfair and something He could have prevented. I became angry and turned my back on God for a long time. As the years passed, I started to come back to Him.
A little less than twenty years ago a series of events which happened one on top of the other sent me into a deep depression. One day I was living a normal uneventful life and then everything changed in what seemed like an instant. I can tell you I was in the darkest scariest pit I have ever experienced. All I wanted was for the pain to stop. It was at that point I cried out to God. He heard me. He answered me. I experienced His mercy and comfort. I can write that, but the words are not sufficient to explain what I experienced. God showed up in a big way. He saved me. Not in the redemptive way of saving - I was already a Christian. He literally saved my life. That experience changed me.
One event I turned away from God.
One event I turned to God.
That second event was the turning point in my life. Since then I have faced the troubles in my life with my hand in His. With reliance on Him. With trust.
How do we continue living when these horrible things happen to us?
We hold on to what we do know to be true - who we know God to be. He is there for us to comfort us, to love us, to help us through it. We trust Him with our grief and our pain and our suffering. We cling to Him. We ask Him for strength. We hold tightly to our faith and our hope.
When we are steamrolled by life we cry out to Him. And He will be there to hold us. Count on it.
* You may want to read Hope, not Hope So dated 8/15/18.