Through suffering, God is conforming us to the image of His Son. When we are faced with personal tragedies, we should remember that God is not just working outside of us, but He is working in us.

It was just after 11 p.m. on an unusually cold January night in north Florida when the knock came at our door—a dreaded knock that no parent ever wants to receive. The knock informed us that our twenty-three-year-old firstborn son, a firefighter and paramedic, had just died.

And it felt as though we died. Our hearts were frozen stiff in that cold night air. How do you go on? How do you endure in the midst of suffering? How do you face the deepest miseries of life? What are the things that will ballast your soul in fierce storms of this present evil age?

Here are three plain biblical truths that have helped me. They are not new truths. They are probably all things you already know and believe. They are certainly things that as a pastor I had known and believed for many years, and yet they are truths that have, in the midst of personal tragedy, become more precious to me than ever before.

1. God is always good.

After Sam died, I did what I often do. I read. I read the Bible. I read books on suffering, on grieving, on loss, on lament, and a lot of books on heaven. But of all the things I read, one of the most surprisingly helpful things came from a children’s book by Jonathan Gibson called The Moon Is Always Round. I had picked it up to read with my disabled daughter to help her process her loss. I think in the end, it may have been just as helpful for me.

In this little book, Dr. Gibson uses an analogy drawn from the phases of the moon to help explain the goodness of God. The simple illustration is that in spite of the way things may appear from our perspective, “The moon is always round.” Sometimes it may look like an apple slice or a squished orange, and sometimes it may give only a sliver of light, but however it might appear, the truth remains that the moon is always round.

And what is true of the moon is true of God. Sometimes, in the dark night of the soul, God’s goodness appears hidden: hidden behind deep sorrows, profound losses, and excruciating griefs. And yet the Scriptures testify to the fact that in spite of how it might appear, God is always good:

For the Lord is good;
his steadfast love endures forever,
and his faithfulness to all generations.
(Ps. 100:5)

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