Sunday, August 27, 2006, the sun beats down steadily but not oppressively on the streets of Pamplona. It’s a lazy Sunday afternoon in Spain, the kind of day siestas were made for.
The traffic on the streets—if you can call the occasional car “traffic”—is also lazy, relaxed and unhurried, with one exception. A silver van speeds down the avenue, pausing only briefly before shooting through a red light.
In the back of the van a young girl is spread out across the seat, her head cradled in her mother’s arms. “I need you to breathe, Allison!” the woman says. “Keep breathing!” But Allison is breathing, the deep breathing that’s past sleep, the coma from which she will not wake up. Or perhaps she has already awakened; perhaps, somewhere between the house and the hospital, her soul slipped away from the presence of her panicked parents and into the calm presence of her Father.
The sun shines on a lazy afternoon in Pamplona as the girl’s parents speed down the road toward the end of their world.
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The girl was Allison Veldt; she was 13-years old. In Written in Tears, Luke Veldt describes the aftermath of the sudden, unexpected death of his daughter. Veldt writes, “It took the death of my daughter for me to begin to understand the love of God.”
I was shaken when I read this. It is a frightening reminder that even the things that are most precious to us, the things that we hold closest to our hearts, the things that we allow to define us, can be taken from us in an instant. One second- and life as this father knew it, was gone.
As I first read this, I could not help but wonder how Veldt could see God in the midst of his suffering. However, in this lamenting father’s heart-wrenching response, what I found instead of doubt, was beautiful evidence of God’s undeniable presence.
How can we hope, if everything our hope is in can be taken from us? Why do we ever love, if those we love are just temporary beings waiting to be consumed by death? How can we claim to have a purpose, if we fail to recognize a divine presence that far surpasses our understanding? We can’t. Without God, there is no hope- there is no love-there is no purpose. Without God, our suffering consumes us.
One of the most powerful lessons this story teaches is that the hope that God provides is not packaged in a bundle of logic that provides reason for our suffering; rather, it is the essence of his eternal presence. In the midst of Veldt’s deepest grief it wasn’t answers he wanted; he wanted Allison back. “Answers, even if I could get them, would not dispel my grief; answers are a poor substitute for a daughter. It wasn’t an answer we were lacking, but a presence, a person. And you can’t replace a person with a doctrine. So the presence of God, while not the presence we were craving, was the right sort of response. It was more a hug than a word of wisdom.”
I am reminded of Isaiah 40:8. “The grass withers and the flowers fade, but the word of our God stands forever.” So often we find our sense of purpose in temporary things- in people, in our jobs, in money, in sports, in our appearance- but we forget that in a moment, it could all be gone. It takes one accident. Everything can be taken from us- everything, except God and the eternal hope he gives us.
At some point in life, everyone finds himself engulfed in utter despair- some sooner than others. Veldt’s response in the midst of his despair is one of the most graceful I have ever heard:
I believe that God is good. I don’t believe that it’s appropriate for you to tell me so when my daughter dies. When my daughter dies, it’s my job to tell you that God is good.
In order to have hope, we are forced to recognize that there is something beyond the temporary. We are forced to recognize that there is a divine presence that no calamity can ever undermine.
His hope is my anchor. His hope is the sole certainty in an uncertain world.