Moreover we know that to those who love God, who are called according to his plan, everything that happens fits into a pattern for good (Romans 8:28, PH).
I survived a crazy childhood, growing up in an alcoholic home, with my mom being married and divorced seven times. But I came to Christ in high school, at the age of seventeen, and turned my life over to the Lord.
The stats all say that if you come from a divorced home, you most likely will end up divorced yourself. But by God’s grace and against all odds, my wife and I are closing in on our thirty-fifth wedding anniversary. So all in all, in spite of the heartbreaks in those early days, it has been a pretty happy story.
Lost Boy, the film that tells my life story, closes with our family walking down the street together, and it’s almost as though you could write the words on the screen: “And they lived happily ever after.”
I had been showing this film in various churches in different parts of the country, and I would speak afterward, telling the story of Joseph, how he faced many adverse circumstances in his life, and how God brought good results out of evil circumstances. Not that bad is good, but God can bring good out of bad and bring glory to His great name through it all.
And then came that morning in July 2008, when we got the terrible, incomprehensible news that our thirty-three-year-old son Christopher had been killed in a car crash on the freeway.
Good out of bad? The best results out of the worst circumstances? Was the message of Lost Boy still true, or was it all a sham?
Even in the depths of our grieving, we had to say the message of the movie hadn’t changed. The chronicle of God’s grace and faithfulness that we told in Lost Boy was as true as ever. We found ourselves in the midst of a life chapter we would have never, never chosen. But God still will bring good out of bad. He will bring glory to Himself.
