“I am the LORD, and there is no
other. I create the light and make the darkness. I send good times and bad
times. I, the LORD, am the one who does these things.” (Isaiah 46:6b-7)
On the night of 14 November 1940,
three hundred German bombers dropped 500 tons of explosives, 33,000 incendiary
bombs, and dozens of parachute mines on the industrial city of Coventry. During
the raid, 507 civilians were killed and 420 seriously injured.[i]
It had been suggested that Winston Churchill
knew that the attack was going to take place but keep it a secret so the Germans
wouldn’t know the Allies had cracked their secret code. New research concludes
this might not have been the case. However, I have to wonder, if Churchill did
know for sure and did know that evacuating the town would have let the Germans
know their code would have been cracked, would he have kept the secret?
I’m not a Churchill scholar but considering
how many other times he had to sacrifice the lives of others to win the war, I
would have said he probably would have. Think about it, D-Day was a victory,
but it was also in many places a blood bath. I personally talked to a soldier
who climbed the cliffs at Omaha Beach. He and two others were the only ones in
his platoon to survive. Churchill and the Allies did all they could to prepare for
the battle, but all the commanders knew they would lose a lot of men, and if
something went wrong maybe even most of them. As it was 133,000 men invaded,
with over 10,000 casualties.[ii] Yet, they knew if the war was going to be won,
they had to take the fight to the enemy.
Was it worth it? Yes, it was to the
free world but to the families who lost one or more sons that day it was, to
say the very least, horribly painful. In the end, God will judge the hearts of
those involved, but to most of history, it seemed like the right call.
What does that have to do with the
scripture I quoted?
We often want to protect God and
remind people that God might allow things, but he doesn’t do them. However, God
here and in other places doesn’t back down. He knows he has the power to stop bad
things from happening so in one way he is responsible, but clearly, He believes
the cost is worth it. That is uncomfortable. Emotionally speaking it seems cruel
to say it. Just as it would have been cruel for me to say to that veteran, “it
was worth, however, letting you watch your buddies die though.” Just to clarify,
I didn’t say much during that discussion with that vet, I let him grieve. In one very real way, to win the war, it was
worth the loss, but on the day, I was talking to that vet, it didn’t feel like
it to him.
God isn’t afraid to take responsibility.
Yet, there are times in the scriptures he allows men and women to cry out in
accusation, to question, and also to just be silent and allow the person to
grieve. Jesus did weep with his friends at the death of Lazarus even though he
knew the end of that story. In the time of pain, the knowledge that God could
have stopped it doesn’t help. Yet, when we can think and reason clearly, we can
trust that if God is allowing it there is a reason, even if we don’t like it at
the time.
When it comes to dealing with people
in grief, my advice is to listen to Paul and “weep with those who weep”[iii] and
don’t try to give excuses or try and justify God. Just grieve with those who grieve
and silently trust God has a plan.
[i] https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/myths/coventry-what-really-happened/
[ii] https://www.eisenhowerlibrary.gov/research/online-documents/world-war-ii-d-day-invasion-normandy
