A gunman opened fire at a military processing center at Fort Hood, killing one civilian and 12 soldiers, last week, Nov. 5. Twenty-eight people were hospitalized.
The gunman, identified as Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, a psychiatrist, was shot multiple times and was taken into custody, ending the shooting rampage.
Tragic stories like these keep appearing in the news.
We hear of school shootings or work shootings or suicide bombings nearly every week.
It is hard to relate to what is going through the minds of the families that have lost loved ones that day unless you have been there.
Just this moment after I had chosen the subject of my column and while I was writing these words, I took a phone call and was told that a family friend had just passed away.
The man was young and I sit here in shock as I write this. This is a call that all of us have taken or will some day take.
The moment that tragedy hits, your day changes and in some cases your life changes.
However, tragedy such as this story out of Fort Hood, presents unusual opportunities for good.
The potential for good comes from the fact that people are awakened to realities that they would otherwise ignore.
Writer C. S. Lewis famously made this point in his observation that ...
"God whispers to us in pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world."
This is profoundly true.
Once the world is awakened by tragedy and attention is drawn away from those trivialities that blind people to God, an opportunity emerges. But there is no guarantee that it will automatically be redeemed.
Someone must rise to speak God's truth into the pain and suffering.
John Bunyan is known to most people today as the author of The Pilgrim's Progress, a book he began writing in prison.
It tells the story of "Christian," who makes his way from the "City of Destruction" (which represents this world) to the "Celestial City" (which represents Heaven).
Written in the form of an allegory, it tells of a life full of suffering, that "Christian" must face. Bunyan knew well of tragedy.
Bunyan was born in England in 1628 at a time of great political and religious unrest.
In 1644, at just 15 years of age, both his mother and sister died within a month of each other.
Later that year, when Bunyan had turned 16, he was drafted into the Parliamentary Army and for about two years was taken from his home for military service.
He married in 1648, at about the age of 20, but his wife died just 10 years later, leaving him with four children, the oldest of whom was blind.
According to Bunyan, five or six years after his conversion, in about the year 1655, some of the believers in his local congregation began entreating him to speak a word of exhortation unto them.
Although initially hesitant, Bunyan agreed to their request and suddenly a great preacher was discovered.
Apparently, word spread quickly through the English countryside.
According to one author, in the days of toleration, a day's notice would get a crowd of 1,200 to hear him preach at 7 o'clock in the morning on a weekday.
Unfortunately, it was not to last. In 1660, John Bunyan was arrested and imprisoned for preaching without state approval.
Officially, he was charged with being in violation of the Elizabethan Conventicle Act of 1593.
According to this Act, anyone found guilty of abstaining from coming to church to hear divine service, and being a common upholder of several unlawful meetings could be held without bail until he or she submitted to the authority of the Anglican church. As a Nonconformist preacher, this Act applied to men like Bunyan.
Not even his suffering in prison could dampen Bunyan's enthusiasm for the Word of God or for writing.
Indeed, if anything, it increased it.
Some of his best-known works were written from a prison cell. These include Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, written during his first imprisonment, as well as The Pilgrim's Progress, completed during a second period of imprisonment in 1677.
Bunyan's writings are surely one of his greatest gifts to the church.
Lessons from
a Suffering Pilgrim
A thoughtful examination of John Bunyan's reflections on the purpose and value of suffering can give us wisdom in how best to deal with it in our own lives.
Near the end of his spiritual autobiography, "Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners," he penned a brief account of his imprisonment in the Bedford jail.
it, he tells of how he tried to prepare himself for imprisonment, and possibly even death, when he realized that he might soon be called upon to suffer for the cause of Christ.
Naturally, as one might expect, one of the things he did was pray. He was particularly concerned to ask God for the strength to patiently endure his imprisonment, even with an attitude of joy (Col. 1:11).
However, it's the second thing that he says that I find especially interesting and helpful.
He reflects on the words of the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 1:9:
"We had the sentence of death within ourselves in order that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead."
Commenting on this verse, he then makes the following two observations:
By this scripture I was made to see that if ever I would suffer rightly, I must first pass a sentence of death upon everything that can properly be called a thing of this life, even to reckon myself, my wife, my children, my health, my enjoyments and all, as dead to me, and myself as dead to them. . . . The second was, to live upon God that is invisible; as Paul said in another place, the way not to faint, is to look not at the things that are seen, but at the things that are not seen; for the things that are seen are temporal; but the things that are not seen, they are eternal.
Bunyan realized that, like it or not, suffering, pain, loss and death would all come to him in one way or another.
Indeed, sooner or later every single one of us must ultimately face these realities.
How, then, can we best prepare to meet them?
As Bunyan reminds us, if we only prepare for prison, then we will be unprepared for beatings. But if we stop our preparation with beatings, then we will be unprepared for death.
But we cannot evade or cheat death forever.
And thus, concludes Bunyan, "the best way to go through sufferings, is to trust in God through Christ, as touching the world to come; and as touching this world."
This was how Bunyan lived, and with God's help it was also how he died.
May the eternal and unseen God grant each of us the grace to follow his example.