Trusting in Divine Providence While Experiencing Evil Part 1
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Deliberation by Mario Sanchez Nevado
Introduction
How does a person trust God? How should someone trust God? The question is a difficult one to answer if thinking in terms of only one answer or when trying to distill trust in God down to an easy formula or saying. How can one capture trusting God down in one or two verses, abstractions or rules of thumb detached from the variety of narratives of God's people struggling to survive, failing and actually trusting in God? It is all the more difficult if one is not prepared to empathetically enter into the experiences of those suffering and trusting in God or to allow the diverse circumstances conveyed in the Bible to speak to diverse people and realities today. I hate platitudes because they are mismatched. They assume a reality (often times false) and enforce it onto a foreign circumstance (i.e. the woman raped or father who lost a child is experiencing a "blessing in disguise"). They are non-empathetic and yet proport to teach or comfort, neither of which they do not. With all of this said, how does one trust God?
The best way for me to explain trust in God is to explain my life's story and how God's world and life flowed into mine. I used to hate it when asked to give my "testimony"--still do in some ways. I find the beginning of my story personally embarrassing if taken in a way that is supposed to make me special or is taken in a grandiose way. The way I see it, God even visited me and this says more about God. Then there was the difficulty in the reality that the most dear parts of my story were for a very long time traumatic throwing me into depression at best or a PTSD fit at worst. I would have to find some way to bury myself just to stay on the surface of my testimony and not relive it. Then there is the difficulty of how to explain having your personhood crushed and marred as a child by abuse causing physical and psychological harm extending on into adulthood--and yet, while being damaged also being overtaken by divine love to such a degree that one would do it all again. I am not saying the first was necessary for the other or was part of some divine plan--that is just morbid. However, I am saying the latter gives meaning and light to the former.
Alright, no more stalling but here is what I will not be covering: I will not be covering many of the particulars since they involve revealing identities. I also have no stories with shock value or dazzling insights. All I have is my life in brief and how God has entered into my struggles and how I have come to trust him and how I have perceive trust in God in a multifaceted and ever growing way. It is from the angle of how I have balanced knowledge that God is a God of love who provides for his people (and those who are not his!), is sometimes hidden, allows evil but who is love, and is everywhere present--in, among and around us. This is a story about God and who he is in part, through my eyes and out of this how and why I trust Him.
Light
Like I said, I find myself horribly embarrassed about this part of the story and yet compelled to tell people about it because it shows that God does care about the smallest of us and interacts with us in interesting and unique ways (most of which goes unnoticed).
I first met God when I was nearly six years old. I calculate it by the absence of my two adopted sisters and the church that we attended: The Marina Cathedra (probably "Cathedral" folks just pronounced it that way). I had just listened to a fire-and-brimestone sermon and, recalling I had pinched my little sister, was certain I was a great sinner. I had a choice: choose Jesus and go to heaven or say no and go to hell. My child-brain thought the former sounded better. I informed the Lord that I already had a dad and didn't need another one, but conceded I would be his friend and do whatever he told me. I then told my mom that I had to see Pastor Turner so I could get baptized to make it "official." However, immediately after saying "Pastor, I want to be baptized!" I fell to the ground praying something I do not remember and was immersed in pure light.
What I experienced is difficult to explain to people. I can't say much. I am in the strange predicament of having experienced something/someone of a different quality, more real than what I experience every day. Instead of having a hazy experience it is best thought of as ultra clear but by analogy it is like a person seeing another basic color and then returning and trying to explain what it is and what it was like without their brain being able to retain that color. I used to just say this light was "whiter than white, lighter than light and more real that reality." I was just immersed and existed in this personal light. Nothing was said to me, I just knew who it was and communed.
In another instant I realized I was on the ground praying and sat up. The Pastor was praying over me and then asked: "Allison! Did you accept Jesus into your heart?" and a series of other questions to see if I understood my decision. He then agreed that I could be baptized and my parents took me away. I noticed something sticky on my head and my parents said that while I was praying he anointed my head with oil. I didn't tell them about my experience because I assumed this happened to everyone when they say yes to Jesus. However, before I left I felt as though God told me (that quiet inner voice) to remember what happened because when lots of people get older they forget this kind of thing. I reminded myself whenever I thought to and took great pains not to change much.
I didn't know it at the time, but I was going to reflect on this experience for years to come and it would give me hope in dark times. When I experienced extreme isolation it would remind me that God visited me and that even though I was alone and unloved by others, he loved me even if I could not feel his presence.
AQ
Through the years this experience has also made me lonely since I didn't know anyone else who experienced something similar. In later years I would read others that had similar experiences such as the dessert fathers, W. Pannenberg or a traveling preacher who escaped slavery. At Fuller I finally met someone! Then discovered someone related to me who was not a Christian had this happen to him when he was a young man--this was the person I had been strangely compelled to talk about God with all the time since a child and the same was true for him--and then there was a good friend of mine who I would never have guessed! When I called her she was completely changed into her best self and had a similar experience only two days before we spoke! She has been struggling in many ways but I can see God working in her beautifully and I am amazed.