Back Cover Review: If God Is Good by Randy Alcorn

“Life is pain highness and anyone who tells you different is selling something.”
- Princess Bride

Six years ago Chet and I found out that I was pregnant. We experienced all the expected joy and shock at the fulfilled hope of being parents. Finally, after a week of holding our breath and tongues, we told our friends and family and co-workers. One week later, I miscarried. The worst I could imagine happened to me. I was devastated. I felt hurt. Why me? Would we be able to have children after all? (I also found out that almost every woman I worked with had a miscarriage too.)

One month later, I was pregnant again. For the next nine months I prayed and prayed and prayed. God, please let us keep this baby. Please don’t let it happen again. When I went into labor all those fears came pouring out – and my Mom listened. She had no idea I’d been so worried.

Several months after our oldest daughter was born, the phone rang one night while I was feeding her. It was a girl that I had never met, but a friend gave her my phone number. She had just miscarried, her husband was out of town and on his way home, but she had just gone through the same experience – alone. I cried with her and I prayed with her – and for her and her husband. I felt the agony of what they were experiencing right then and there. If I had not gone through the same thing, I wouldn’t have been any comfort to her. What the enemy meant for evil in my life, God used for good! I don’t know this girl’s name, but I pray that she’s snuggling up and reading bedtime stories to her own little one now!

God is my refuge and my strength. He is there to be my shelter in the storms – and as long as we’re in this world – this side of Heaven – there will be storms and pain and suffering. But one day, He’s going to come back and wipe away our tears, send Death packing and throw the knockout punch to Evil and Suffering. Until then, we need a little help making sense of all of this…

Quotes from If God Is Good:

Believing God is not the same as trusting the God who exists. A nominal Christian often discovers in suffering that his faith has been in his church, denomination, or family tradition, but not in Christ…If you base your faith on lack of affliction, your faith lives on the brink of extinction and will fall apart because of a frightening diagnosis or a shattering phone call…Losing your faith may be God’s gift to you. Only when you jettison ungrounded and untrue faith can you replace it with valid faith in the true God – faith that can pass, and even find strength in, the most formidable of life’s tests.

“I’ve read books…and I’ve discovered that wisdom begins with the humility to say there’s a great deal I don’t understand.” (p. 22)

Some of God’s virtues will forever capture the spotlight that, without evil and suffering’s temporary hold on us, never would have taken the stage.

…While often called “natural” evils, diseases and disasters are in another sense unnatural in that they result from evil, an unnatural condition.

This book is a powerful tool both for coming to terms with grief personally and for friends who have a hard time understanding how there could be a loving God that allows evil and suffering. Read it and let me know what you think!