“And if thou shouldst be cast into the pit, or into the hands of murderers, and the sentence of death passed upon thee; if thou be cast into the deep; if the billowing surge conspire against thee; if fierce winds become thine enemy; if the heavens gather blackness, and all the elements combine to hedge up the way; and above all, if the very jaws of hell shall gape open the mouth wide after thee, know thou, my son, that all these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good.” It is estimated that there were as many as 1.3 million casualties from the use of chemical warfare during World War I. No one who personally went through or witnessed the death, pain, disfigurement and long term physical and psychological health problems brought about by these gas attacks could see them as anything but a tragedy. In order to help those on the frontlines to endure and survive gas attacks, a lightweight cotton fabric was developed for the filters in gas masks. After the war, the company responsible for creating these gas masks didn’t want all of that supply chain to go to waste, so they tried to sell them to civilians. They called these lightweight cotton sheets Kleenex. It’s hard to say how many lives have been saved by disposable Kleenexes that have stopped the spread of infectious diseases but it is unquestionable that the world changed for the better when those gas mask filters were invented. It is not obvious that a tragedy like chemical warfare could lead to fewer people getting sick in the future but that is why we have to trust in the Lord’s promises that whatever horrible, tragic, unforgivable things we are called upon to endure, they will all in the end be for our good. We can’t see how. That’s fine. Sometimes if the Lord were to tell us exactly how it wouldn’t make any sense. Our modern day is full of amazing, good things that all came about from the tragedies and senseless violence of war. A man working on scopes for guns invented super glue. Another working on radar for planes accidentally invented the microwave. Most of the things in our smartphones - computers, digital cameras, GPS, the internet - all came about from military projects. Maybe billions of people navigating unfamiliar streets perfectly to get to their destination every single day using the GPS on their phones makes up for all of the terror and paranoia of the Cold War that led to the invention of GPS and maybe it doesn’t, but good things came out of that and every other war. It may take years or decades for us to see the promise fulfilled that all things will be for our good, but we can trust that all of it will ultimately be for our good in the end.
