Evangelist Ray Comfort knows a Christian family where the husband and wife drove to a church meeting. Their teenage son drove there alone. On the way home, Ray’s friend came across an accident, so he stopped to help. When he looked in the wrecked vehicle, he saw his beloved teenage son, dead – impaled on the steering wheel.
On June 19, 2000, five young trainees with New Tribes Mission pitched a tent during a violent storm in Mississippi. Jenny Knapp, an attractive 20-year-old, noticed that the rain was causing the roof to cave in. So she lifted the tent pole to raise the height of the roof. Just as she did that, a bolt of lightning struck the pole and tore through her body. Her friends were able to resuscitate her and get her to a hospital. The young missionary recovered, but she is terribly scarred and partially blind.
In the real world, lightning strikes the just and the unjust, the unsaved and the saved. God’s “wonderful plan for your life” does not preclude tragedy and intense suffering.