Trials and Temptations

“Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil (Matthew 6:13).”

Some translations read “into temptation”, some “into a time of trial”.  James tells us that God does not tempt us, we tempt ourselves.  But Job shows God let us have / gives us trials.

“Unbroken” is the biography of Louis Zamperini by Laura Hillenbrand.  Louis was fast, fast enough to make the 1936 Olympic team as a 19-year-old.  During WWII he survived several dangerous bombing runs over Japanese-held territory, then survived a crash at sea while looking for another lost plane.  Lost at sea, three times Louis was near death from lack of water, prayed, and it rained.  Rescued by the Japanese, in prison camps he endured brutal labor, extreme cold and psychological and physical torture, mostly at the hands of Mutsuhiro Watanabe, a psychopath Japanese guard the prisoners called the Bird.  When he was nearing death, the war ended.  He met and married the love of his life shortly thereafter, but PTSD and alcoholism threatened to overwhelm him.  He set his heart on finding and killing the Bird.  

There were two crucial moments in his spiritual life.  One was on the raft in the middle of the Pacific Ocean when he heard angels singing and saw God’s majesty in the stars and Louis promised God that he would dedicate his life to him if God saved him.  The other was the second time his wife dragged him to a Billy Graham Revival and Louis remembered his promise on that raft.  He never again dreamed about Watanabe.  And many years later, Louis tried to find Watanabe to offer him forgiveness, but apparently the Bird was too afraid to meet Louis.

After giving his life to God, Zamperini spent the rest of his life running a camp for at-risk youth, trying to help them find their purpose in life, offering them his faith as an example they might follow.  It is hard for me to escape the conclusion that God led Louis through every time of trial and preserved him through every temptation.  So many times, he should have died.  

But if God preserved Zamperini, what about the other men on that raft, Phil and Mac?  Phil survived the raft and the war, Mac died at sea.  What about the eight other men who went down when their plane crashed?  What about the Jews that died in the Holocaust?  Infants who die of cancer?  I don't mean to sound callous, but you are going to die one day soon.  Tomorrow, next year, next decade or next century, it is the blink of an eye.   

And yet God came to earth as one of us, lived a perfect life despite being mocked, abandoned, tortured and betrayed, and then died a horrific death so we could be saved from our sins.  The question for each of us: do you trust that God loves you?  If Louis had walked out of that revival tent, he probably would have died alone, tortured by his ghosts.  I believe Louis’ friends who died in the plane crash, the Jews in the Holocaust - every person who ever lived - all our days are measured by God and God will judge each of us with perfect justice and mercy.  

God delights to do good things for us. In this last line of the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus encourages his children to ask his help, as any parent does.  God is walking beside us, protecting us and calling to us.