He slices through the cheese with the edge of his cracker and eats it. “The pain I understand.”
I decide to step out on a limb, hoping it won’t crack under me. “Lottie told me that you lost your wife,” I say softly. “It must have been devastating.”
“Four years have passed, and I still miss her.” He leans back against his chair, his gaze forward as if he can see inside the castle walls. “When your heart is yanked out, it’s hard to cram it back into your chest again.”
I nod slowly. After Scott’s deception, I wasn’t sure if my heart would ever be whole again. “What was Grace like?”
He thinks for a moment. “Charming and smart and confident in just about everything except when it came to saying good-bye. She was a fighter like Ella, but the cancer, it devoured her from the inside out.” He glances over at me, his eyes sad. “I’ve never told Ella about her mom’s excruciating pain. I want her to remember the laughter and love that Grace poured over her instead of the pain.”
I lower my wineglass to the table. “Sometimes I wonder where God is in the midst of such heartache.”
”I think God’s in the center of it all.”
My eyes grow wide. “That sounds so cruel.”
“I don’t mean it to be cruel. It’s just... I spent years wrestling through the question of why God would allow harm to come to His children, like Jacob in the Bible wrestled with God, I suppose.”
The weight of his memories seems to bear down on him, his gaze refocusing on the lake. “In the midst of Grace’s suffering, Isaw glimpses of hope. She believed that a renewed and restored body awaited her on the other side of death’s veil. Sickness might have taken her from this earth, but I believe her soul is resting now, hidden away with a compassionate God. He doesn’t run from pain like humans often do. He’s not afraid of it because He knows what’s beyond the grave. No more suffering for those who cling to Him.”
My eyes focus on the lights below us. “But so much suffering right now.”
“I believe God refines us over the fire at times, purifying us like gold, but if the account of Creation is true, then God’s original plan for all His children was beauty and peace and daily walks with Him—not cancer or gas chambers or kids being shot when they attend school. This purity, I think, often stings deep inside, but what freedom to know that God never forces anyone to love or serve Him. Even if it breaks His heart, He allows people to walk away.”
Josh takes a sip of wine. That book by L.M. Montgomery changed my perspective on God and His love for me, but it’s one thing to refine someone and another to...
I mold my thoughts into words. “I don’t know if I’ll ever understand how God can allow so much devastation in this world.”
“I don’t know if I’ll ever fully understand the complexities of the spiritual realm either, at least in this life, but I think the Bible gives us plenty of clues about the freedom that humans have to choose good or evil. Many choose darkness over the light, though I can’t imagine how anyone who holds a baby or watches a sunrise or sips something as simple as this Austrian wine can deny the Creator of all things good.”
I shift in the hard seat. “Some people think that God caused the Holocaust—”
“Hitler and a whole host of men caused the Holocaust. I don’t believe that was ever God’s will.” He taps on the edge of his wineglass. “So often God is blamed when things go wrong, but people don’t usually give Him credit when things go right. Jesus said that a time is coming when the prince of this world will be driven out.
“Life is hard, but He promises victory in the end. And if we believe what the Bible says, we have to focus on what we know to be true—that God loved this world and that His son was moved with compassion by the suffering here.”
My heart seems to somersault. “Like with Grace...”
He nods slowly, studying me. “I don’t believe it was God’s will for her to die, but I do think He used her life and, I pray, her death for good.”
“Because He is good.”
“To the core.”
I glance over at the shadowed mountains to the west. “Liberty’s mother said that Max spent a year roaming these Alps, fighting against the evil here. When the war started, he was able to make it over the border to Switzerland. Eventually he joined up with the Allied forces and fought alongside them.”
“Everyone has a choice,” Josh says. “Be strong enough to do what is right or be consumed by evil.”
And I wonder what I would do if given the choice. I pray that I would choose what is good.
When Josh lifts his wineglass, I reach for mine. He toasts to the hope of tomorrow. A place where possibilities abound. A place where one day evil will be destroyed for good.
TheLORDis my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?
theLORDis the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?
PSALM 27:1 (OLD TESTAMENT)
CHAPTER 29
