In the summer of 1992, I climbed into a truck with one of my closest friends expecting to talk to him about God. Before the evening was over, he asked me a question I couldn’t answer.
His name was Brian Manor. We had become friends through basketball, playing on the same team and competing together in summer tournaments. I had just returned home from my first year of Bible college, and for months I had been praying that God would give me an opportunity to share the gospel with him. I believed that evening might be the answer to that prayer.
I drove to Brian’s house, and before we left to play basketball, there was a knock at the door. A woman his family knew was standing there. Her husband had recently been killed in an accident, leaving her with children to care for and needs she couldn’t meet alone. Brian’s family opened their cupboards, gathered groceries, and handed them to her. Then she walked back out the door carrying bags of food into a life that no longer included her husband.
A few minutes later, Brian and I climbed into the truck. Neither of us said much at first. We had just watched a widow stand at the door because the man who had helped provide for her family was never coming home. Her children would eat that week, but their father was still dead. No act of kindness, however meaningful, could change that.
Then Brian turned to me and asked, “Tate, where is God when a man dies and leaves his wife and children behind?”
I was nineteen years old, a pastor’s son, and a freshman in Bible college. I had heard thousands of sermons, memorized Scripture, and spent a year studying theology. I had gone to Brian’s house hoping God would give me the right words to tell him what I believed. Instead, my friend asked one honest question, and I discovered how little I knew about speaking truth into real suffering. I said something that night, but I don’t remember what it was. I only remember knowing that my answer didn’t carry the weight of his question. It wasn’t that I had stopped believing in God. I simply didn’t know how to explain where God was when a widow stood at a door carrying groceries home to children whose father had died.
I’ve never forgotten the question Brian asked me that night.
More than thirty years later, I can still hear it: “Where is God when a man dies and leaves his wife and children behind?” I’ve been working on the answer ever since.