FROM TRAGEDY TO MINISTRY

Some may be called to live above personal disappointment to serve others.

A successful professor bought a BMW for his son. But calamity struck. His son met with an accident while driving the car and perished. The professor’s wife, who was in the car when it crashed, also died.

Distraught, the professor felt life was meaningless since he had lost the closest members of his family. After he had come to terms with his sorrow, he decided to use his expertise in organic farming to help poor farmers improve their livelihood.

The grief he went through helped him to empathise with the sufferings of the marginalised:

“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ” (2 Corinthians 1:3-5).

Having received God’s comfort in our sufferings, our role now is to serve and comfort others.

An extreme case happened in the life of the prophet Ezekiel. One day, God told him that He was going to take his wife home. And he was not to weep over it (Ezekiel 24:15-16).

Some of us may be called to live above our personal disappointments and sorrows. We will never be able to understand this side of eternity why God, at times, deals such a cruel blow to us – just as He did to Ezekiel – but we, nevertheless, soldier on and serve Him. God’s presence and strength will enable us to minister.

“And though the Lord give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet your Teacher will not hide himself anymore, but your eyes shall see your Teacher. And your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, ‘This is the way, walk in it,” when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left”’ (Isaiah 30:21-22).

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