Hard times need not be a faith killer

Life is full of unexpected catastrophes. It can take just one phone call or one unexpected letter and your whole world can go into free fall.

The victims of the M5 tragedy would surely be able to identify with this observation. The rolling news coverage has moved on, but the casualties are still there: the bereaved, the injured and the traumatized (which could include witnesses and members of the emergency services too).

People, understandably, react to tragedy in a variety of ways. Sadly, for some it becomes a “faith-killer”. It was for the investment broker I met in France some years ago. He “simply couldn’t believe in a God who had allowed his friend to suffer in the way he had”.

But, as always, it all depends on your perspective. His wife saw things very differently. She admitted that she couldn’t understand why God had allowed things to develop the way they had but even in her darkest moments she was ready to trust someone she had come to know as her Heavenly Father.

Interestingly, for all its corrosive power the ‘problem of evil’ has not dealt a deathblow to faith. In fact the reverse is often true because in spite of their general indifference towards God, people regularly turn to prayer in their hour of need.

That should come as no surprise. David Hay writes, “My personal judgment after a quarter of a century of research in the field is that all human beings without exception have a biologically inbuilt spiritual predisposition”.

And Hay found that the ‘God-instinct’ is even to be found among those who are highly disaffected as a result of their previous encounters with religion.

“We have become aware that they too have a spirituality,” he continued (see Dave Hay, ‘Spirituality and the Unchurched’, Bible Society 1999).

The urge to pray is a powerful confirmation of Hay’s thesis. But it is more than that: it is a very effective way of helping people see that God is no figment of the imagination; He is alive and well, and eager to help those who are in trouble (Psalm 46)

‘Betty’ discovered this some years ago. Betty’s husband collapsed and died following the heart attack he suffered while repairing a church roof. She was quite willing to admit that his death left her feeling completely bereft. But in her moment of agony she cried out to God, and to her utter amazement she said that she became aware of His presence in the most tangible way. And, from that day on she assured everyone that she could truthfully say she had never ever felt alone again.

King David must have had a similar encounter with God. It allowed him to pen the following familiar words some 3000 years ago.

“Even though I walk
through the darkest valley,
I will fear no evil,
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff,
they comfort me.” (Psalm 23)


Kata’s story is very different. Kata, a former member of the Yugoslav communist party, was living in the picturesque Croatian town of Vukovar when the war of independence broke out in 1991. Three months later, when the brutal siege was lifted, most of the town had been devastated.

“It was, perhaps, the most comprehensively destroyed town of any size in either Bosnia-Herzegovina or Croatia during the wars of the first half of the 1990s,” says the BBC’s Gabriel Partos.

But Vukovar’s shattered buildings only mirrored the traumatic experience of those who had been living there. Kata for example witnessed brutality on an unimaginable scale, and lost everything, including her brother. Indeed she felt so traumatised that she began to see that her heart had “turned to stone”.

But God had plans for Kata and they began to unfold when she visited Wales in the summer of 1992. Kata was acting as the translator for a group of refugee children who were enjoying a holiday arranged by a Christian based in Swansea. While staying in his home Kata’s attention was drawn to two very different books: ‘Spiritual Depression’ by Dr Martin Lloyd Jones and Billy Graham’s ‘Angels, God's Secret Agents’.

Kata, an English language teacher, avidly devoured them. And then, prior to her return to Croatia someone gave her a copy of the New Testament and Psalms. She initially viewed it as “a peculiar little book” but as she started to dip into it she discovered that rather than reading the book, it was actually reading her! And then she had a series of powerful dreams in which she says Jesus appeared to her. She “adopted the habit of speaking to Him” and, consequently, they became good friends. They have remained good friends ever since.

Like countless believers over the centuries, Betty and Kata are reassuring reminders that the best place to be when you’re in a storm is in the Father’s arms. But that poses a very important question: how will people know unless someone has the confidence to tell them?



Rob James is Executive Chair of the Evangelical Alliance Wales and Pastor of Westgate Evangelical Chapel