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Reflection on the Meaning of Suffering



 FROM THE DAD'S EULOGY FOR HIS SON:
On Wednesday night, I think I may have confused Ethan.  After arriving to the ER and after being worked on by the trauma team, Kristen and I were pulled into a waiting room to be told that Ethan’s heart had stopped…..that Ethan had passed, and that there was nothing the doctors could do.  I immediately ran into the trauma room where I found Ethan’s naked body on the table.  I grabbed him by the arms and said “Ethan, your a little scrapper, you know how to fight, so fight for daddy, you have to come back, daddy says come back!”  In that immediate moment his heart started up again.  I think the confusion for Ethan was that as he was making his way to Jesus, he heard my voice calling to him.  His mind full of wonder was probably attracted to the beautiful light of God but the obedient boy that he is, he came back when he heard me.  
 At that very moment, Ethan’s ministry began.  I didn’t see it then but it can’t be any clearer now.  The mobilization of prayers throughout the country and the world unified an entire global community.  Facebook exploded!  My analytical mind cant help but wish for an algorythm that could measure how many thousands of people connected to God through Ethan in prayer.  From Nepal, to Holland, Japan, California, Puerto Rico, Texas, and many more places, tens of thousands were praying.  And they were posting, and texting and calling. Even The Donald, yes Donald Trump prayed for Ethan.  Ask me later. It’s an amazing story.  And just as Jeff stands next to me today, your prayers supported us when there was no way we naturally could.  
 Ethan started something big.  A friend of mine who I hadn’t seen or heard from in over 12 years wrote to me saying, “Sam, I haven’t spoken to God in over 10 years, but today I spoke to God because of Ethan”.  Others wrote saying, “I am hearing God louder and clearer in my life than at any other time.”  And others expressed, “Ethan has restored faith in Jesus for me.” It’s so ironic, that as people prayed for a miracle in his life, the miracle was actually happening in theirs, in my life and in yours.  Some of you may have never met Ethan …but all of us met God at some point last week. I will never forget what Ethan has done to my life, never forget what God did in yours.  That will be his legacy forever.  A short life of 20 months that ministered to more people than some may do in 90 years of living.

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