Easter weekend headlines included Astronaut Victor Glover, TODAY Show co-anchor Savannah Guthrie, and an unnamed U.S. airman shot down in Iran. All three faced challenges or trials with undaunted faith.
Glover was the pilot of the Artemis II space mission. His Easter greeting from space acknowledged the beauty of God’s creation and the value of each human. His Christian faith is well known. In an earlier interview he said, “My career is fed by my faith, and you know, anytime I do something that’s pretty risky, I pray. Definitely when you go sit on top of a rocket ship… There are no atheists in foxholes. There aren’t any on top of rockets, either.” He trusts the outcome to God saying, “I am a messenger of His kingdom. His will be done.”
Guthrie returned to her position on the show after an absence of nine weeks due to her mother’s abduction. In an Easter message, she was transparent about her struggle not knowing her mother’s fate. “Perhaps this is too dark a message to share on Easter morning,” she said, “but I have long believed that we miss out on fully celebrating resurrection if we do not acknowledge the feelings of loss, pain and, yes, death. It is the darkness that makes this morning’s light so magnificent, so blindingly beautiful.”
The name of the U.S. airman rescued on Easter is not disclosed. What we do know is that he followed survival tactics requiring minimal voice transmissions. All he said was, “God is good.” These three words gave proof of life and evidence of his identity as he is known as a man of faith. He uttered these words while injured, knowing his life was still in danger. It was a declaration of faith as an epitaph if the worst happened.
By faith, these three faced challenges and adversity. But Karl Marx famously dismissed faith as the “opium of the people.” Historian Will Durant observed worldwide suffering and concluded that an all-powerful and benevolent deity does not exist. “These steeples, everywhere pointing upward, ignoring despair and lifting hope,” he complained. “Is it all a vain delusion? As long as men suffer, those steeples will remain.” To Marx and Durant, faith may help you cope with suffering, but it is a hollow hope without substance or meaning.
Paul offers the Christian perspective on adversity. “Momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal” (2 Cor. 4:17-18). The focus is not on affliction in this life, but the eternal glory which awaits. That is why these three peered beyond the rim of their foxholes.