Why Does God Save Some?
In Whither Thou Goest, I Will Go, we got to know several precious, funny, clever kids – Charley, Magdalena, William and Susan’s little girls and others. When the Children’s Blizzard hit, some died. Some lived.
Why?
Because I’m the author, and I said so. I don’t remember all my reasons now. Maybe I thought this certain death would have more impact. Maybe I thought this character has been through enough already. Maybe I’d been writing for five hours straight and my bladder was screaming for relief, which made me irritable enough to kill off a character. Who knows?
But, as it turns out, in real life, when the Children’s Blizzard hit, some of the people who spent the night exposed on the prairie lived, and some didn’t. Some of the people who got diphtheria and pneumonia lived, and some didn’t. Some of the women who got pregnant survived childbirth, and some didn’t.
Later in our history, some of the men who climbed onto the beaches of Normandy lived, and some didn’t. Some of the soldiers who went to Korea, Vietnam, Iraq came home, some didn’t. Some of the ones who did come home continued to survive. Some didn’t. Some teenagers make it out of high school intact, surviving riding with friends, killing levels of stress, drugs, and their supreme confidence in their own immortality. Some don’t.
Some children are born healthy, some aren’t. Some who are born healthy stay that way, some don’t.
Why? Why does God let some suffer more than others?
Oh, do read on, because obviously I’m going to answer this question in this blog. It’s so simple really.
No.
Nope. I’ve got nothing. Unlike my petty little writing decisions, God makes His out of a depth of goodness that we can’t hope to understand. I trust God’s reasoning. I don’t understand it, and don’t expect to. But I do have one expectation.
I made this little drawing when my husband, Donald, was in the specialty hospital, breathing with a ventilator, confused, fighting multiple infections, trying to communicate by selecting letters as I spelled them out. Donald was determined to fight on. Doctors told me that this infection, or the next, or maybe the next, would be his last, and there was no way to stop them coming.
Awful.
I mean, obviously. The word doesn’t even capture it. There isn’t a word that does. But I had the one expectation, so I drew it and hung it over his bed:
