Floods, Suffering, and Where Is God?

Good Morning Friends,

In the eve of the horrors of the flooding in Texas, particularly the flooding of Camp Mystic, I want to try to express some of the reflections running through my mind.

To start, we live in an era of unprecedented communication. I try to avoid the news as much as possible because of the constant grief, chaos, and suffering in the world. I cannot control any of it, and none of us are meant to carry all the suffering in the world. I find that I can too easily be sucked into the latest event, forgetting the crosses I am called to carry.

This event, however, just hit too close to home for me to avoid entirely.

As a resident of Western NC, I know all too well the absolute destruction a flood can do to a community. I also know all too well how sudden these events can be.

I’ve tried to avoid social media posts about conspiracy theories and blaming because they easily spark my temper, but I haven’t been able to avoid them all.

I started to think about why people respond this way, and I quickly came to the conclusion that people want an explanation. They want to have a false sense of control, to be able to say that if they were in that situation, they could have escaped. They want to escape the weight of the burden of grief that the knowledge of tragedies brings, regardless of whether it affects them personally.

It also had me thinking about one of my least favorite modern heresies: the prosperity gospel. It is shockingly common for Christians to claim that belief in Jesus equates material and physical, worldly, prosperity—the very opposite of what Jesus preached. One of the most painful wounds this heresy continues to cause is Christians claiming that suffering is merely a punishment. (Sounds all too like the heretical criticisms of Job’s friends in the book of Job, doesn’t it?)

This led me to reflect on the little children directly affected by the flood, whether they are survivors or children who lost their lives. How do you talk to people about this event? How do you face that this happened to you or someone you loved?

This is a weight far too heavy for a child to carry. That was my first thought. But then I quickly realized, this is a weight far too heavy for anyone to carry. No one should have to carry this. This shouldn’t have happened. And the flood spared no one. It didn’t care that some were heroic. It didn’t care about age, wealth, political party, or morality. Nature came and left its mark. It’s horrific and devastating and crushing.

I look at my children, and my heart aches. It’s almost cliche to say “a mother’s worst nightmare is losing a child,” but there is nothing cliche about it at all. I've watched friends walk this path. I’ve jumped up at night in a sweat, imagining this horror. And as a mother, who was once a camper and a summer camp counselor, there’s no way I can separate myself from the grief these parents are feeling.

But what do we do with this grief? That’s a critical question. Do we allow it to crush us? Do we avoid all risk and lock our children in our homes with us? No. We can’t. Do we blame others and preach conspiracy theories to give a false sense of control? This only deepens wounds. Do we rest in a heretical gospel that gives us a false sense of comfort because we aren’t directly affected by this tragedy? Absolutely not. We are called to serve all people.

What we need to do is take a step back. We need to realize that even if some conspiracy theories prove to be true, we, the average people, have no control. We cannot live our lives in fear. We have to allow our children to experience life, take risks, build relationships, and explore—whether through summer camp or family walks. And we need to love our neighbor as ourselves, which means doing the acts of charity we are capable of.

Sometimes the unpredictable happens, and no one is to blame.

My next question I want to address is, Where is God in all of this?

It’s the eternal question: If God is real, why does he allow suffering? If God is real, why would he allow such unprecedented, undeserved destruction?

This is the eternal question for a reason. If you have read the book of Job, you realized that God doesn’t exactly answer that question to Job. He simply points out that He is God and Job is not.

Free Will. Suffering. Permissive vs. Perfect will. It only gets us so far with things like natural disasters.

Where is God? He’s weeping right there with us.

When Lazarus died, what did Jesus do? He wept.

You might say that comparison only takes us so far because Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. But I want us to sit there with that for a second. Jesus wept.

When Herod killed all of the baby boys, the Bible doesn’t say it, but I know what God did: He wept.

I’ve cried out to Jesus during seasons of life where I experienced suffering I didn’t “deserve.” Where was Jesus? He was weeping alongside me.

Why didn’t God stop the flood? I don’t know.

Why do I have healthy children while others lose their babies? I don’t know,

I don’t know, and it hurts, and it’s heavy and crushing. What I do know is that God is weeping with us all. What I do know is that God somehow takes everything and brings beauty out of it, and he is already doing that here. What I do know is that we can’t know everything on this side of heaven. What I do know is that we have a God who is not afraid to enter into our suffering with us.

When tragedies like this happen, we have to grieve. We cannot and should not hide behind a false sense of control. We need to grieve, to weep, and to let Jesus weep with us. Then we need to take the grief and let beauty rise from the ashes. This suffering should not be in vain. Read the stories about the heroes, recognize there is hope for humanity, and strive to love better, do better, and be a hero amidst the beauty and trials in your own life.

Because this is a weight far too heavy for anyone to carry, but when we carry it together and yoke ourselves to Christ, the weight is no longer crushing.

I know this was a different sort of newsletter today, Dear Friend, but I hope it brought some light in a world full of darkness. God bless you, and let us all pray for one another and the victims of this tragedy.