“God lives, He is there. He answers prayer. We are so blessed to have this miracle given to us.” – Ed Smart, the father of Elizabeth Smart, the 15-year-old girl who vanished from her bedroom nine months ago, and was found alive yesterday.
I hate to criticize this grateful, gracious, and evidently loving father in his hour of joy, but this is a crock. Why not ask God what the hell He was thinking of in the first place when He allowed the girl to be kidnapped?
The more this “God answers prayers” bit gets played up in the media over events like this, the more hurtful it is to all the other parents who’ve had their kids kidnapped, prayed their hearts out for a safe return, only to have their kids found dead. They’re either left with blaming God and possibly suffering a loss of faith at a critical time, or else they think that they must be to blame somehow, otherwise God would have prevented the tragedy… and so they’re left with debilitating guilt.