Last March we spent a week in Philadelphia being assessed by World Harvest Mission, who oversees the Prague church planting team we’ll be joining soon. Along with us, there was another married couple and three single girls. One of these was Jessica, a Furman student who had already done a lot of mission work and had a heart for the Muslim world. She was applying for an internship in Europe as part of discerning what her call to missions might look like. We stayed in the same house all week, got to hang out a lot, and really liked her. She was into John Piper and The Office. Clearly we became friends.

This month Jessica was doing her pre-field training in Colorado. Sunday morning she was traveling with several other missionaries when they were in a terrible wreck. Jessica, another young woman, and an eighteen-month-old child were killed. The baby’s parents are still in the hospital; the mom is in critical condition.

We are crushed. And of course it doesn’t make sense to us. How does it help the Kingdom to take a girl who would have given the rest of her life to missions? Why save the parents and take the child? God does not give us any of these answers, at least not now. He does not have to.

There is one thing we do know: it won’t always be like this. “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” Come, Lord Jesus.