It's one thing to experience a sudden tragedy like the loss of a child or the discovery of some dreaded disease in your body.

And it's quite another thing to experience the relentless misery of that loss week in, week out, month in,

month out, or even perhaps for years afterward.

Women have been known to lift automobiles off of their pinned husbands after an accident and then later collapse under the strain of the shock of the moment.

And there's a spiritual counterpart to that phenomenon.

In the stunned moment of tragedy,

many Christians are given the strength to say the Lord gave and the Lord has taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord.

But then later, under the relentless ongoing emptiness of the rooms and the chairs and the shirts and the arms collapse

in dismay at God's hard hand.

Soldiers have been known to have a leg blown off

by a landmine and then run on the raw stump back to the ditch and then

later weep like a baby as the healing pain comes.

In one afternoon, Job lost his 10 children and all of his wealth and then shortly after that he contracted a horrid skin disease with boils that had worms in them and were infected with dirt.

And he conquered in that moment.

Chapter 1, verse 21, he said the Lord gave and the Lord has taken away.

Blessed be the name of the Lord has taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord.

Chapter 2, verse 10, shall we receive good at the hand of the Lord and not receive evil? He conquered. He was like Sarah Edwards.

I think I've told you this once before a long time ago. I love this story. The wife of Jonathan

Edwards, 1758, he was in Stockbridge packing up. He had already left to go to Princeton. He'd become the president one month earlier of Princeton

College. Smallpox was sweeping through the Northeast. He decided to set a good example

for the students, took the inoculation, it backfired, his mouth swelled up,

he couldn't take any water and he died.

...