God’s goodness in a broken world

Last weekend: a forced-march through busyness.

In the midst, I hunker down emotionally. I grit my teeth in the guise of a grin. I soldier on without expectation for more than survival. 

But then – an explosive interruption, so powerful as to knock me flat, so profoundly significant as to leave me obsessively moodling over it almost a week later.

Saturday evening, I was at church with Mark and the girls for a Kairos fundraiser. Kairos is the prison ministry our church supports. Mark participates not just as pastor but as missionary – going behind bars to bring food for soul and belly to men starving for something good to eat. (Mark and other Kairos ministers joke that the “brothers in white” show up for cookies and fried chicken – but the Holy Spirit works with that.) 

Covid interrupted Kairos like it did everything else on the planet; the pent-up energy of those gathered in anticipation of the mid-October prison time was unmistakable.

But Kairos is a both / and proposition: both a demonstration of the incredible, miraculous, transformational power of the redemptive grace of God… and a reminder of the depths of brokenness, wickedness, and despair that make God’s power so utterly necessary. 

We heard from several ex-offenders about the difference Kairos had made to their lives; we heard how many years had been squandered and how many other lives had been hurt before Kairos made that difference. One man who spoke had spent as many years behind bars as Maggie has been alive. 

Near the end of the evening, my phone buzzed – neighborhood-and-church-pal April was calling. It went to voicemail, and then Mark’s phone buzzed – April again. Sensing something was wrong, I texted that I would be free to chat in a few minutes.

Once in the parking lot, I called and April picked up, out of breath and talking fast: “A child has been lost in our neighborhood. Her name is Michele. She is five years old. She is non-verbal, autistic. She is wearing yellow. You will see the emergency vehicles when you get here; please check in your back yard.” 

We prayed on the way home, and several texts from other friends popped into my phone – a photo of the child, details of the search. 

She had been visiting our neighborhood, attending a relative’s birthday party; she had disappeared early evening. 

Maybe she was wearing a yellow dress; maybe it was a yellow jacket. In the photo, sausage braids beside cherubic brown cheeks; eyes averted; tiny sneakers.

When we pulled into the neighborhood, we were stunned by the number of people out. Walkers with flashlights. Cars, driving at a snail’s pace, windows down, calling into the night, “Michele?”  Junior high-aged boys wearing glo-bracelets, whizzing past on bicycles. “Michele!”

It is hard to describe and harder to fathom: a residential neighborhood had been completely transformed into a community. 

People who had never met one another were galvanized by a shared, urgent purpose. 

We were… connected. 

We were all searching the darkness for the lost child, the little girl who couldn’t speak, someone else’s baby… we were ALL searching.

As soon as we pulled into the garage, the girls hotfooted it to the backyard. Nobody there. 

Where were the flashlights?

Did the batteries work?

The park was completely dark… maybe best to start there…

As the girls headed out the front door with flashlights, April called again.

“They found her in the pond.”

I can’t even type those words without crying.

They found her in the pond.

The next moments, crumpled up. 

Huddled. 

Sobbing out prayers. 

Struggling to respond to Maggie’s outraged grief, “How could this happen? How could this happen?” 

Overwhelmed by my pain for this lost child, this child I would never meet in life… how could I be hurting like this, when Michele was not my own?

Throughout church and Sunday School next day, that question dogged me: How could I be hurting like this, when Michele was not my own?

Sunday evening, a vigil for the dead child. 

The neighborhood-turned-community gathered at the pond, several hundred households bound to one another by shared grief. 

Pink ribbons. 

Flowers.

Luminarias. 

Michele’s parents, broken-hearted but extraordinarily beautiful and strong… Michele’s parents speaking comfort to the neighborhood that had turned out to support them. 

Michele’s parents talking about the love of Jesus and the certainty of Jesus’s arms around their baby, the certainty of laughter and music, the certainty. 

Their certainty of the goodness of God in the midst of these most awful of circumstances.

Michele’s family, immigrants from Nigeria, took turns telling the assembled neighbors how welcomed they felt… how blessed they were… how grateful. Grateful. 

Grateful?!? 

They would be burying a child in foreign soil in the immediate future, but they were praising God and thanking their neighbors for sharing in the crucible with them. 

If I have ever been in the presence of the holy in my life, it was Sunday night, listening to Michele’s parents testify to the love of Jesus Christ as the tears ran down their faces.

I am in the early stages of untangling the knots of my own emotions regarding this tragedy. I am baffled; I am broken. 

But I am also humbled and awed by the way that God’s goodness is the dominant theme of the story… God’s goodness is the clearest part of the story… God’s goodness, ultimately, is the end of the story.

God’s goodness pulled people out of the comforts of their homes last Saturday night to search for a lost child. 

God’s goodness pulled people out of their private griefs last Sunday night to comfort the grieving parents – and to receive unexpected and profound comfort from those parents. 

God’s goodness is on display in the form of pink ribbons tied on trees and lamp posts throughout the neighborhood – memorials to Michele, yes, but also to God’s goodness which is holding Michele close, even now.

At the Kairos meeting, God’s goodness. Wasted years. Evil deeds. Broken hearts. But… God’s goodness in the form of deliverance, transformation, freedom.

In our neighborhood, God’s goodness. Shared pain over the death of an innocent child making a community from strangers and grafting in a family whose loss has made them forever part of us.

This beautiful, fallen world… where men go to prison for doing bad things and children sometimes die… 

This world points so imperfectly to God’s goodness, but God’s goodness is the point of this world. 

God’s goodness is the point of this world.