Uncovering God’s purpose in tragedy

God has called us to use our lives – every season – to spread the gospel, but in some seasons, it’s harder to stay focused on that ultimate purpose. It seems to be the seasons of death and frailty when I’m most aware of God’s purpose for my life, and my priorities seem to snap into order in a crystal-clear way. 

by Eric Most

John Piper says, “There are only three kinds of Christians when it comes to world missions: zealous goers, zealous senders, and disobedient.” I think about this bold statement often. I want it to be untrue, but the more I think back on my life, it was in the zealous going and sending moments when I felt closest to God. 

Unfortunately, those moments have been few and far between for me. Most days, most years, I believe I fall in that third category – disobedient. It’s hard to be zealous all the time. The mundanity of daily life takes over, and my focus wanes from God’s kingdom to weekend plans. 

I believe that’s why 18th-century revivalist preacher Johnathan Edwards included in his 70 resolutions to “think often of death and dying.” It seems macabre, but when we think of our ultimate end often, it’s impossible to let our days pass as if there were an endless supply of them. It forces us to think of life as finite and ask ourselves, “What is most important?”

During the time we have, what are we doing to bring God’s kingdom to earth? What are we doing to zealously go and send?

The reality is, whether we intentionally keep our focus on what is most important or not, there are moments in life when we are forced to think of death and dying. God has a way of using those moments to refocus, reprioritize – and suddenly, it becomes clear what we should be doing with our time and resources. 

I have had a lot of those moments in the last couple years. Turning 40. My father becoming ill. My mother passing. And, most recently, a beautiful day spent backcountry skiing with friends that ended in tragedy. 

The reminder

It was the Monday after Christmas, and my friends and I were spending the day splitboarding (think of a snowboard that splits in half so you can trek uphill) around an abandoned ski resort. All the old runs were still there, but there was no ski lift. That’s the beauty of backcountry skiing or splitboarding – putting in the work required to get to the top of a run makes that descent so much sweeter. Plus, you get to explore God’s beauty all on your own – no crowds, no noise, no distractions. 

But you have to be careful. 

No people means there is no ski patrol running avalanche mitigation. No one is controlling the drifts, closing runs when they get too dangerous. When you go in the backcountry, you are in charge of mitigating your own risk. 

Which is why my friends and I were prepared. We had all been through avalanche training. We had looked at the avalanche risk for the day. We looked at the angle of the slopes and determined which areas we would avoid. We were each carrying safety gear – a beacon that would transmit our location if we got buried or lost, a probe to stick down into the snow to feel for a buried person, a shovel to dig someone out – all the things we hoped we would never need. 

We’d been out on the slopes for about five hours when we stopped to have lunch back at our truck. The view from the parking lot was spectacular – snowy mountains in every direction. As we were eating, we spotted a group of what looked like four hikers on the mountain where we were going to finish out our day. They were near a zone we’d planned on avoiding. We took note, hoped they were being careful, and packed up our lunch to get back on the slopes. 

We trekked a mile or two up this mountain, found a nice path down, and skied to the bottom, finishing in this beautiful glade of trees. It was fantastic, the perfect way to end our day. We’d been out since 5 a.m., and we were exhausted. 

While we were transitioning our skiis to make our way back to the trailhead, I heard a soft whomp – nothing huge – and then some voices. I thought of the group we’d seen earlier and called out, asking if they needed any help. Nothing. I yelled again, louder. This time, I heard a faint “yeah.” 

That’s when I realized that whomp had been an avalanche, and these people were in danger. We climbed back uphill through some trees as quickly as our gear allowed. By the time we arrived, two teenage boys were out from under the snow. They had found their brother buried under seven feet of snow and dug down to his chest – far enough to clear his airway. He was breathing, but there was still one more victim. The father of these three teenage boys was still buried. 

We all turned on our beacons and got to work searching. By the time we found the father, about two meters away from his son, he was not breathing. We performed CPR for 30 minutes until the search and rescue team arrived, but the father had been buried too long. 

He was a Denver dad. He was a beloved high school science teacher. He was 44 years old, young and fit. He should have had many more decades of adventures with his sons, but instead, his life had ended in an instant. 

The mission

God is constantly pulling us back to him, back into a bigger story. I cannot begin to fathom all the intricacies of God’s whys and hows, but I do know he is working all things for his glory and our good. 

Being there that day changed me. It forced me to recognize that I’m not guaranteed tomorrow. No one is. We can’t say, “I’ll do that in 10 years when my business sells,” or “It’ll be more convenient to do that once the kids are out of the house.” 

God wants us to live each day as close to him as possible. That means following the plan he has for our lives, staying focused on what is most important. God has called us all into a great mission. And he is calling us to be faithful – to be zealous – today. 

“The life of the godly is not a straight line to glory. It’s more like a dark and seemingly unknown trail through the mountains. There are rockslides and slippery curves and hairpin turns that make you go backward in order to go forward. But along this hazardous, twisted road that doesn’t let you see very far ahead and may even make you feel like you’ve been led to the edge of a cliff, God gives us encouragement and hope that all the perplexing turns in our lives are going somewhere good.”

— “A Winding and Troubled Road (feat. John Piper)” by The Joy Eternal