Armando wrote out the following, hours after getting the phone call from the coroner’s office:

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“My joy is gone; grief is upon me; my heart is sick within me.” – Jeremiah 8:18

I wish I could just see his smiling face. Go to the gym one more time, eat pizza and hot wings with him. Watch our favorite episodes of the Simpsons like we did every week. I have lost today the best friend I’ve ever had, he was always around when no one else was available to hang out. He would be 21 this November 27th, and I would have drank a beer with him to celebrate. Seems now I will be having that beer in remembrance of him.

The first memories that come to mind was when my mom was pregnant with him, and my parents were explaining to us who we would be staying with while my mom was in the hospital. After he was born, as a baby, me and my brother Gregory would argue who would hold him and read the bible and other books to him.

I remember how we had the nook set up in our house that we called the “Sammy Corner.”
I remember how as a little kid he would sing “Jesus Loves Me,” and other songs we learned in church and in Sunday School.
I remember the family trips we used to take to New England and Texas.
I remember when he went on a short term missions trip to Mexico with me.

He always wanted to go on camping trips with me, but other events seemed to always get in the way of him.

Most of all, I remember him as an individual who loved the lord, who faithfully helped my mom in her Sunday school class at Riverlakes church. A man who grew frustrated with the Lord for not opening the hearts of his friends and classmates to receive the gospel. A man who knew that his Saving Grace was in Jesus Christ, and not in the things of this world. I don’t think, in the 20 years I have known him, have had a single argument with him whatsoever.

Now, he stands before the Lord, unashamed, for he was bought with the blood of Christ, and he will dwell with him forever. And until I join him, or til Jesus comes, I will miss his company every day of my life.
I am blessed for having so much time getting to know him, his likes in techno/electronica music, his interest in Geology and Philosophy, his kind, gentle nature.

The days will only get tougher for me and my family. Your prayers and condolences are greatly appreciated in this time of trouble. And I am glad to have the Lord, and my brothers in sisters in Christ to draw strength from.

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.” – 2 Corinthians 1:3-4

All praise be to God our Father in heaven, who sacrificed His Son on our behalf, so that there will come a day when there will be no pain, misery of mourning. But at the moment, I have too much of it all.

-Armando Steven Gonzalez
In Memorandum of Samuel Joseph Gonzalez
My loving brother, and brother in Christ
(Nov 27 1990 – Nov 9 2011)
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I’m reminded of the line in the famous hymn, “It Is Well With My Soul” by Horatio Spafford, penned after all four of his daughters died on a ship that sank while crossing the Atlantic in 1873:

“When sorrows like sea billows roll; Whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say, It is well, it is well, with my soul.”

Where does the strength to go on even come from? The author of Psalm 46:1 makes it clear:

“God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” (ESV)

We can look to a man named Job in the Bible for another example of suffering well. Upon receiving news from a messenger that his sons and daughters were killed in a natural disaster, he said,

“Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.”  (Job 1:21)

How can a Christian deal with pain and suffering? Though I have not personally experienced the tragedy Armando is in the midst of, in recent years I’ve began to learn how the key lies in recognizing that this earth, with its disease and death as a result of man’s fall in Genesis 3, is not truly home for the true Christian. Heaven is our real home, where,

“Death will be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away” (Rev. 21:4). There will be no temptations to face, no burdens to bear, no guilt to grieve over, no sickness to battle, no unanswered questions to baffle us, no ignorance to humiliate us, and no unsatisfied desires to frustrate us. Nothing that has scarred and stained our lives on earth will be there to shame us. There will be no regrets, no remorse, no second thoughts, no disappointments, and no lost causes. Best of all, there will be no indwelling sin to plague us. As J.I. Packer puts it, “There will be no sin in heaven, for those who are in heaven will not have it in them to sin any more.” Small wonder that David cried out to God: “In your presence is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16:11)  -John Blanchard [full article here]

Here are a few additional quotes to consider, mentioned in last month’s issue of Tabletalk Magazine centered around the topic of dealing with death and disease:

We know that we are going to die, but we don’t know when. We know that others we love are going to die, but we don’t know when. Neither do we usually know how. What we do know, however, is exactly what we need to know. What we ought to know is this: knowing more details about our future should not radically change our present.
“What would you do if you knew you had only a year, a month, a week, a day, an hour to live?” may make for an interesting parlor game, but the answer ought to be “The same thing I have been doing, hoping that I have decades left to live.” -R.C. Sproul Jr [full article here]

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Obviously, I do not delight in the fact of someone’s death. But I rejoice in the opportunity that the death of a believer opens for communicating the majesty of Christ and the glories of the gospel while comforting the family and friends and presenting salvation by grace to those who are lost but have come to “pay their respects.”
-Harry Reeder [full article here]

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“For the believer, death does not have the last word. Death has surrendered to the conquering power of the One who was resurrected as the firstborn of many brethren.” -RC Sproul [full article here]

Please keep in your prayers Armando and his family, as well as those around all of us who are dealing with death.

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Check out this video Kevin and Tiffany recently shared on their blog ( KevinsRecovery.com ) showing the changes, and what life is like as a paraplegic:

“We’re still praying for a miracle & are sure hoping that’s Jesus’ plan, but we’ll see where He continues to take us.” -Kev and Tiff

What an encouragement his life is to the rest of us when it comes to suffering well and trusting God when it really counts. They still need our prayers, so let’s not forget them.

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I feel so unqualified to comment on it all, being such a sudden, tragic, life-changing event. Maybe the thing I can identify with most is just how hard it is for those closest to Kevin, because I watched my dad break his back in a jet skiing accident years ago, and saw my brother break his back and leg in a downhill snow skiing crash (both of them recovered, miraculously I might add). On the subject of sympathy for people, Charles Spurgeon pointed out something of value:

“There is no learning sympathy except by suffering. It cannot be studied in a book, it must be written on the heart. You must go through the fire if you would have sympathy with others who tread the glowing coals. You must yourself bear the cross if you would feel for those whose life is a burden to them.”

I’m sure he didn’t mean that you have to endure that specific situation, but merely that in order to care about someone who is hurting, to some degree you need to know what it’s like to be hurting. Another statement from Spurgeon, “Many men owe the grandeur of their lives to their tremendous difficulties,” can be seen in a very hopeful light if you consider that what results from the suffering can be very beneficial in the end. That might be a greater resolve and strengthened character that the “victim” would not have developed without the circumstances they were put through. Three words pretty much sum it up for the Christian: God is good.

Amidst tragedy is often when you find out what you really believe. You might even find out that what you believed was true. Those are two related but different things. By finding out what you believe, I mean that you can look back on your initial reactions to a situation and have a pretty good guess about what concerned you most in the situation and what it was you did in order to get through that situation. As a Christian, I would either discover that I had little-to-no deep-seated trust in the God I claimed to believe in if my reaction was to completely panic, or I might discover that my trust in that God was there under the surface ready to swing into action in this situation that hit me. That second part that might happen, finding truth after finding out what I believed, is where the good stuff is at. Certainly you can’t stop at just having what you personally believe, because that doesn’t always match up with the truth (take for example people like George Sodini and his gym class massacre last night in Pennsylvania that ended in suicide; he may have known his view on women but he didn’t have the truth about the value of each life he wrongly took).  I can’t help but suggest that truth comes back around in some way to truth about God. I can say that in those few occasions where I do get to later look back on an extended, rough circumstance and see meaning, it’s both comforting and indescribably exciting.

…or are they really? Isn’t it in the valleys, rather than the mountaintops, that we can learn the greatest lessons? Not that we do actually learn these lessons–instead I think we can, if we’d only stop to see what’s happening, or see how we can deal with what’s happening.

But yes of course we can learn on the mountaintops. Unless learning in this sense is “hearing about”, versus the deeper understanding that comes through experience that breeds a genuine acceptance of the truth, though not to imply that specific personal experiences are a prerequisite for learning…

What I’m saying (repeating from others, more accurately) is that if getting through a difficult time can actually help us in the long run, why should we be so quick to wish these times never come upon us?

(based on:  James 1:2-3)