http://eugenecho.wordpress.com/2008/05/21/praying-for-steven-curtis-chapmans-family/
http://www.rbc.org/devotionals/my-utmost-for-his-highest/05/22/devotion.aspx?year=2008
Tragedy as the world sees it, pain as the Chapmans family sees it, hope as God sees it. We shy away from pain and suffering because there is no immediate relief that we can seek and we know that we can expect immense testing. A child of God may pray for God to prune him or her to be more Christ-like, but no one prays to be crucified, for a loved one to be harmed, health to be taken away, job to be lost, a hope to be crushed. God doesn’t desire all these to happen to us, but if all these were to happen and God has a plan and purpose too great for our feeble minds to understand, how are we to respond? Like Christ, broken before God the Father and honestly admit that we alone cannot handle the ride, believing that God will send His comfort along our way. We tend to believe that because Christ was God, He had it easier than us, that He won’t really understand what it means to be a helpless human. But Christ is fully God, AND fully human like any of us. If He didn’t understand the human condition, He didn’t have shed tears like blood as He prayed to God the Father to take the cup away if He will.
