How Would I have Responded?

I think that he started out pretty well. He had a good message and he did show though his actions what followers of Christ should do. However, when she came at him with the question, “Why did my friend die”, well, he could've dealt with the situation better. Instead of saying things like God doesn't always answer prayer, he could have said something about how God doesn't always answer prayers the way we had hoped he would, instead He answers them in a way that is best for us. I would have also told her a story. The story I would have told her would be this.

In August of 2004 one of my younger brothers, Daniel, went into the hospital again. He already had spent a lot of time in hospitals and already had gone though many different operations. Some of the different surgeries were for a g-tube, g.i.-tube, a tracheotomy, a fundoplycation and some other surgeries where at the time I didn't know what was happening. And in August of 2004, he went into the hospital ICU again. This time, for a ventilator. Basically, what it does is it breathes for him. He was there for a couple days while my mom and dad were being trained on how to work this new machine that was going to be in our house. I went up to visit him one morning in ICU after he had been on the ventilator, and I realized what was happening, my brother now needed a machine to breathe. I talked to my dad, and he basically confirmed what I had thought. My dad told me that if we lived in any other part of the world, if he didn't have the type of job he had, or if things were any different then way that they were now, my little brother might not have been here anymore. And that hit me really hard. I always knew that he could die at any second; I mean it was only 3 years ago when he stopped breathing three different times in a matter of a month, all ending with a trip to the ER and the last time going into the hospital for about three weeks. But this time was probably one of my strongest wakeup calls. That’s when I realized how important prayer is and how important it was that my parents and the rest of my family trusted in the answers that God gives us in order for our family to continue to grow. My little brother who has gone though more than most people have to go though in a lifetime by the age of 10 and he is almost always happy and smiling, especially while he is playing games on the computer or baseball or interacting with all his friends at school.

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A link to the radio clip that this post was written based off of is:

This American Life

"This I Used to Believe"

Act 2 -- Starts at 19 minutes

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=1292