Job CX

 Even when God is silent, He is present. Even when life is hard, God is there. Even when we are crushed and carrying on another day seems an impossible task, His mercies endure. The purpose of your trial may not be evident to you, but it is known to God, and you can take solace in the undeniable, unshakeable, unequivocal truth that good will come of it. It may be that you won’t get to see the good that your trial produced, yet know that it is assured.

I don’t have what some might label prized possessions. I don’t collect watches or tie clips, and the Salvation Army down the road would likely refuse to take half the stuff I own on principle because even the homeless have standards, but the one exception is a cardboard box filled to the brim with notebooks of stories I’ve collected over the years, first and secondhand accounts of people who were persecuted, tortured, and even martyred for the cause of Christ.

The box keeps getting moved from one closet to the other depending on how much room my daughters and their ever-expanding wardrobe of sparkly dresses require, and yesterday, I was informed that my box was in their way and I needed to move it. They said it nicely enough, but it seemed an urgent enough matter to them wherein I dutifully went and picked up my box and moved it.

It had been some time since I’d perused any of the notebooks, and since I had a few minutes, I picked a random one out of the box and began to leaf through it. I read through a couple of the stories contained in the notebook, but there is one in particular that came to mind as I was contemplating the notion that just as Moses was not given to enter the promised land, we may not be given the opportunity to see the good that our trials and hardships produce.

Vasile was not yet a teenager when the police showed up at their home, snatched his father, Toma, and spirited him away in the middle of the night. Toma was a preacher, the type of preacher who was not bashful about sharing his faith in Christ with any who would hear, and news of his dissidence had reached the county officials, who in turn delivered his name to the Securitate.

That night was the last time Vasile would see his father. “The last sermon I heard my father preach,” Vasile said, “was on Romans 8, and how all things work together for good. For the longest time, I couldn’t reconcile that scripture passage with what my mother and I had been going through after losing my dad, and even though my mother was a praying woman who insisted we memorize Scripture every night, I grew bitter in my heart. Not knowing what had happened to my father also weighed heavily on me; the only information we’d ever received came by way of an officer showing up three weeks after he’d been taken to inform us that he was deceased and handing over a certificate of death. They didn’t even bother to bring the body. We never got to have a proper funeral for him. Just a man in a uniform delivering the worst news I’d ever heard in cold, clipped tones.

Almost six years later, close to my eighteenth birthday, a man showed up to our apartment and asked if he could speak to me. By then, my bitterness had been on a slow simmer for years, and I planned to go to university and pursue a career in engineering. I still believed in God, but as far as a relationship with Him, I must admit, it was lacking.

The man introduced himself as Remus, and although he was wearing civilian clothing, I knew he was some type of government official, whether police or Securitate. You could always tell. It’s in their posture, mannerisms, and how they carry themselves. Not so much the haircuts but their bearing.

The man asked if he could come in, and knowing that if I refused, he’d likely come in anyway, I nodded and moved aside. My mother was in the kitchen plucking the feathers off a chicken, and after motioning for the man to sit, I asked how I could be of help.

He squirmed for a while, rubbing his hands together and unable to meet my gaze until, staring at the floor with all the intensity he could muster, he said, “I was there for the last few days of your father’s life. I didn’t have a hand in it, but I was witness to it, being a young officer at the time. Your dad changed my life. I’ve never met someone with more conviction and assurance that there was something beyond this life. He never despaired; no matter what they did to him, he never once despaired. I found Jesus because of what I saw in your father. I’ve been meaning to look you up for a couple of years now, and I felt this was the right time. I just wanted you to know some good came of his suffering.”

I had no words. I don’t think I could have found any even if I’d tried, but one thing did happen, which I remember clearly all these years later: all the pent-up bitterness, the anger, the resentment, the doubts I’d been harboring that I’d never shared with anyone disappeared in an instant. It was like flipping a switch and turning on a light, and what was once murky and in shadow became bright and illuminated.

That one conversation changed the course of my life, and I reminded Remus of this every time we met over another twelve years. Just as my father had changed his life, his visit had changed mine. I got to preach Remus’s funeral and shared this testimony as his friends and family gathered to say their final farewells.

I never went to university, I didn’t become an engineer, but I became a pastor, and now, thirty years later, with six children of my own, I can echo my father’s last sermon, not as an afterthought or something I feel compelled to say, but as a cornerstone of my faith: all things do work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.”

Toma did not live long enough to see the fulfillment of this promise, but he died believing it to be true. We are predisposed to wanting to see, to feel, to touch, to taste, and to experience in the physical what can only be seen in the spiritual. Sometimes, we don’t get to see it or feel it; we don’t get to see the fulfillment of the promise with our eyes of flesh, but we know with an unshakeable faith that comes about by witnessing God’s repeated faithfulness that it will be so.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.