Stephen Viars

“One weekend during the time I was writing this chapter, I was out of town participating in a training conference. About 2:00 Saturday morning, my cell phone rang. My wife, Kris, was calling to tell me that a young mother from our church and her two small children had been killed in a tragic house fire. The husband had been injured trying to save his family and was the lone survivor. As soon as possible I caught a plane home so that I could attempt to minister to this grieving husband and father. The memorial service was held in our church sanctuary. Because of the condition of the bodies and the ages of the children, the decision was made to bury them in one large casket. I had never seen such a casket before, and I would be glad to never see another one. When we arrived at the graveside, there was a canopy, some chairs, and a few shovels next to the freshly dug grave. After I concluded my portion of the service, the casket was lowered into the ground. Then the husband and father stood up, took one of the shovels, and began to shovel dirt around the casket. After a few moments his father and father-in-law joined him. A minute or two later, other men from the group stepped up and relieved the first men of their shovels and continued the task. At some point a person in the crowd began singing a hymn, and eventually everyone joined in. When the service was over, many stayed to hug, cry, grieve, and even rejoice. It was a stark reminder of the implications of Jesus’ words in John 16:33—people suffer.”
― Stephen Viars, Putting Your Past in Its Place: Moving Forward in Freedom and Forgiveness