While being a counselor at Higher Grounds camp I had the blessing of meeting many awesome people and getting to spend some time with them. Tom, was one of them who happen to grab a hold of my heart pretty much as soon as I met him. He also caused me to question some things that I never really had thought about before. You see, Tom was just a normal 17 year old kid who loved to skate, play video games, and hang out with his friends. That is exactly what he was doing one night when one of his friends mom picked them up. On the way home Tom threw his head out of the window (like so many teenagers love to do) and before he knew it another vehicle, driven by a drunk driver, had slammed into his side of the car. Tom likes to joke about it and say that this made a “Tom Sandwich”. My heart broke for Tom, I think partly because he was so young when his accident happened (he is now 21 years old) and also because he had lived a perfectly normal life up to the day of his accident. Now he really can’t go anywhere or do anything by himself. So I asked God the question, “Why would You let this happen?”
The more I thought about it and after talking with others. I was reminded that God always glorifies Himself, simply because He is the Highest and He cannot lie, therefore He has to point to Himself. So can God use what has happened in Tom’s life to bring Himself glory? Yes!! He can. In fact, I believe that Tom can glorify God in ways that I cannot because our circumstances and lives are much different. I know that God is using Tom’s story because Tom taught me a lot of things in the very short time that I got to spend with him. So that leads me to one last question, “Was Tom’s accident worth it if the only purpose it serves is to bring glory to God in a way that he couldn’t if the accident hadn’t happened?” The answer is: absolutely!
Thinking about all of this has reminded me to live my story for His glory, the good and the bad. I hope that you are encouraged by Tom’s story and are also reminded that we belong to the Lord, and that He is always a good God; even when things don’t make sense to us.
This is Tom and I 🙂
