Sometimes Mountains Move:Grief and the Sovereignty of God

Patsy and I received a phone call on Jan.19 late at night that changed our lives forever.Seon mi our daughter in law called from South Korea to tell us that Jay,our oldest son,had died from an acute heart attack one day before his 33rd birthday.Patsy and I had been to their home in September and he appeared to be in excellent health.He and Seon mi were the proud parents of their first child,Haley,6 months old.Jay loved his family and was an English teacher and principal of a private school there.

While our grief has been painful and nearly unbearable,God’s grace has been sufficient.

Several books have been a source of strength to me in recent months. The Psalms have helped me to trust God when I could not find Him.Several books by Philip Yancy have have helped me when I was in a state of “controlled panic.”Ron Dunn’s book, When Heaven is Silent,proved to be a blessing.Then Quiet by accident I came across a book (out of print)by C.Everett and Elizabeth Koop called, “Sometimes Mountains Move.”Sometimes Mountains move is a journal of one Christian family’s ordeal with death-the loss of their twenty-year-old son while mountain climbing.

“Is the grace of God sufficient at a time like this and under these circumstances?”write C.Everett and Elizabeth Koop.”Your gentle son,presumed dead,tied to the sheer face of a cliff hundreds of feet above the valley floor,the tempature below freezing,and the only person who could possibly shed any light on the matter lying under sedation in a hospital.Yes,the grace of God was sufficient…”Here is a sensitive chronicle of faith amid despair,in the tradition of C.S.Lewis’s.A Grief Observed.

Koop writes,It was ten weeks after David died when his Bible came into our hands.His book mark was in Jude.We opened his Bible and read the last thing that he had read”And now unto Him who is able to keep you from falling…”God was able,but in His sovereignty He chose not to.

Many thanks  to the Koops for helping the Poore’s to trust an all sufficient,sovereign God.

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