by Sarah Schwerin

With my head bowed and eyes shut tight, the lady next to me grasped my hand and prayed. “Dear Lord, thank You for the wonderful plan you have for Sarah’s future. Help her wait on You.”

No breeze blew through the camp meeting’s open-air building, and sweat trickled down my back. Yet I remained focused on what God promised to do in my life. He had promised to use me miraculously. Now I needed to wait and watch.

I left the Georgia camp meeting and returned to our Florida home hot and tired, but encouraged. For years, I’d homeschooled my two sons. But now as they prepared to graduate, I was ready for the next exciting step in my life. For the rest of July and then August, I waited for God’s miraculous plan to be fulfilled.

Soon.

It would happen soon.

Heartbreaking news

Then September arrived.

In the middle of the night, my cell rang. My husband sat up in bed. “Who’s that?”

I squinted at the name on the screen. “My dad.”

My stomach knotted in fear as I answered. “Dad, what’s wrong?”

His voice sounded unnaturally calm and flat. “Accident . . . your brother . . . dead. . . ”

Processing

I heard his words, but my brain struggled to make sense of them. My brother was healthy. He’d only turned forty a few months ago.

Dad told me again what I didn’t want to hear.

I hung up and then turned to my husband. Tears were in his eyes as well as in mine.

My brother had died by suicide.

At camp meeting God told me He was going to do something wonderful, something miraculous. But something had gone wrong. How could my brother’s death be a part of God’s miraculous plan? It didn’t make sense. Saddened and confused, all I could feel was loss and pain.

When tragedy strikes

I can imagine that the disciples felt the same way after Jesus’ death. They were also waiting for God’s miraculous plan to unfold. 

The disciples followed Jesus for years. They knew who He was and saw the miracles He performed. After watching the crowds hail Him as the promised Messiah, they must have anticipated eventual freedom from their oppressors. They looked forward to the fulfillment of God’s promises. But something went wrong, or at least that’s what the disciples must have thought. What happened next was not the miracle they were expecting.

One of their friends betrayed them, and their enemies abused and murdered their leader. Their hopes and dreams must have shattered. The senseless tragedy saddened and confused them.

We’ve all been there. Life is going as expected, and then catastrophe strikes. All our careful planning, ruined.

It’s hard to trust God when life makes little sense and our world seems like a chaotic mess. Our first instinct is often to run away from the problem, which is what the disciples did when Jesus’ enemies arrested Him. The disciples focused on their pain and loss just as I had done after my brother’s death. They didn’t understand that God still had a miraculous plan in place.

God’s perfect plan

As Jesus died on the cross, the crowd demanded that if He was the Son of God, He should save Himself right then and there (Matthew 27). Like the disciples, Jesus’ enemies wanted Him to act on their timetable. They had their own expectations and wanted Him to perform in a certain way.

Yet Jesus did not follow the crowd. He provided a perfect example of how we are to wait on God’s timing and God’s purpose even when there is pain and suffering along the way.

Right before Jesus was arrested, He was in agony and prayed to His Father. His humanity did not want to suffer and die. Yet He trusted in God and listened to His Father and obeyed. In Matthew 26:39, Jesus prayed, “O My Father if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will” (NKJV).

To fulfill God’s plan, Jesus put His Father’s will first. God’s intentions may not make sense to our human mind, but they will always be for our best, as expressed in Jeremiah 29:11: “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not evil, to give you a future and a hope.”

When Jesus died on the cross, He provided a way for us to make peace with God. His death and suffering mean we can have forgiveness for all the bad things we’ve done and all the wrong choices we’ve made.

God used murder and betrayal to save humanity.

Fruit from pain

The effects of sin surround us. Abuse. Betrayal. Murder. Suicide. The pain in our world saddens God. He does not want us to suffer, yet He has a plan to heal us and transform our suffering into something wonderful.

My brother’s suicide was not part of God’s perfect plan, yet God has used his tragic death to bring hope and healing to others. As children, my brother and I were both sexually abused. My brother never told his story. He carried the burden of his pain alone for as long as he could. He never received full healing from God, but I have.

After my brother passed away, God asked me to tell our story to help others find healing in Jesus Christ. As a result, I have had many opportunities through my writing and speaking to share our story and the story of God’s healing power. Though it was hard to see at first, God provided the miracle I’d been waiting for.

Faithfully follow

God can use our pain and trauma to bring hope and healing to ourselves and others. When we faithfully follow God and put His will above our own, He will heal our wounds and bring something wonderful and new from our pain.

On that hot, sticky day in Georgia, God promised to do something new, something outside of what I could grasp or even choose. When we faithfully follow God, He will use us in miraculous ways. Watch and wait.

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8, 9).