When Tragedy Becomes Sacred Ground

"Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance." — James 1:2-3

We talk a lot about suffering having purpose. But I'd never heard it said quite like this: “Nothing happens by chance to the Christian. Tragedies are blessings in disguise, and disappointments are his appointments."

William MacDonald wrote those words in his commentary on Hebrews 12. And to be honest, when I first encountered them, I wasn't sure whether to be comforted or offended.

I lost both of my parents in my twenties. Within months of my mom’s passing, a broken engagement shattered the future I believed God had ordained. Tragedy and disappointment were the rhythm of my young adult life.

Was I searching for answers and meaning in the unfairness of it all? You bet I was. If nothing happens by chance, did God orchestrate my parents’ cruel demise? If He did, then why? And how could all this pain and sorrow be defined as a blessing?

It took lots of prayer, time in God's Word, and a circle of close friends to help me see the truth about God. The Creator knit me together in my mother's womb and had written every one of my days in His book before a single one of them came to be. My Heavenly Father was not mean, nor was He caught off guard.

My parents' deaths did not surprise Him. My heartbreak did not confuse Him. He was not scrambling to redeem something that had spun out of His control. He was carefully and lovingly present in every moment—especially when I felt alone and could only take small, tentative but faith-filled steps into an unknown future.

When we stand in the wreckage of a life we didn't conceive, we really have only three choices:

1) We can believe God was able to intervene but didn't care enough to.

2) We can believe He wanted to help but lacked the power.

3) Or we can believe — as Scripture compels us to — that He is both fully loving and fully sovereign, and that His purposes, though hidden from us, are higher than our own (Isaiah 55:8-9).

The third option doesn't make the grief smaller, but it makes God bigger (and kinder). And a loving God who is working all things for our good is the only One big enough to hold us when our world falls apart and lead us into the good plan that He has for us.

In the aftermath of all my losses, James 1:2-4 became the promise on which I staked all my

hope, not because it made suffering easy to understand, but because it reframed what suffering was for. The testing of faith produces perseverance. Perseverance produces maturity and completeness. And the God who ordains the testing is the same God who promises to complete the work He has begun in us—"to be conformed to the image of His Son (Romans 8:29).

Disappointments, MacDonald reminds us, are His appointments. Not punishments. Not accidents. Appointments — moments He has chosen, in His wisdom, to shape us into something we could never become if life were without trouble. That’s what makes tragedy sacred ground— not that we find all the answers, but that we find Him near, comforting, ministering, changing us into the person He wants us to be for His glory and His perfect purposes. 

What "appointment" are you sitting in right now that feels like a disappointment? Can you bring it — honestly, without hiding — to a God who already knows your thoughts and holds you fast in His righteous right hand?

Note: My debut novel, Even In This, traces one girl's journey through trauma and grief—mirroring my own experience. It’s also about the cost of following Jesus, the defeat of evil, and the fierce, fragile courage it takes to fully trust in a good God again.

Click to check out Even In This