Walking with God through Pain and Suffering

by Timothy J. Keller

The Lord has shown us over and over again how He never intended for us to go through this alone. He gave us Himself, and He gave us the Body of Christ. The morning after Wyatt died, two of our friends showed up without calling to look after our other two children. Our Redeemer Church community mobilized an army of prayer warriors and help warriors. Meals were sent, our families flown in from Nicaragua, Arkansas, Texas, and Arizona, people gave up their apartments for our families, rented an apartment down the block, delivered meals to our nanny in Brooklyn, planned and executed the memorial service, printed bulletins, etc. Every single last detail was taken care of, in typical Type-A New Yorker style, with precision and excellence, and all without our knowledge or consent. And so we were allowed to descend to the very depths of our grief, experience it in all its agony, and emerge on the other side. When we emerged, our community had been transformed in unity through suffering, and we were pregnant. “The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away, blessed be the name of the Lord.”