Sometime before Brandon died, he showed me a jar. The homemade ink that he made in one of his art classes flowed freely in it at that time. He kept that little jar in his great big college backpack, the backpack that he tossed onto the backseat of his car, right behind the driver’s seat, every day.

The night Brandon died, the police officer brought us two things—his wallet and his backpack.

I saw the policeman come into my house carrying it. He came in the open front door; I don’t think he knocked. He walked by my office, and I had this incredible urge to scream at him, to hit him, to tell him to leave. Of course, I didn’t, but I also didn’t listen to him confirm what we already knew.  

Later, I searched that backpack, emptying every nook and cranny as if I was searching for some hidden treasure that I never found. There was nothing extraordinary, nothing magical to take away the pain, nothing unusual or unexpected, but there was this little jar of ink.

I don’t know a lot about the injuries that Brandon experienced the night of his accident. I know that his face was relatively unscathed; he looked like he was sleeping. Evidently, he died of mostly internal injuries from the force of the engine being pushed all the way into the back seat.

And that is what fascinates me about this jar, tucked in an outside pocket of a backpack right behind Brandon. While my son’s body was crushed beyond repair, this fragile glass jar—only inches away—was left unbroken, no dent in the lid, no scratch on the surface, no crack in the glass, not a single drop of ink leaked out.

How could that be? How could it be that the force of Brandon’s car hitting that tree was sufficient enough to kill my big strapping son and yet not sufficient enough to so much as crack the glass jar behind his back? There are lots of explanations, I’m sure. It was in the back seat; Brandon was in the front. Brandon’s body, the seat, the backpack itself all worked to shield it, to help preserve it from injury.

Regardless of the explanation, every time I see the jar, I am reminded of one startling, life-altering, truth. God alone controls our days. If we acknowledge that God is all-powerful, then we have to acknowledge that He is in control, and if we say that He is in control, then we have to understand that sometimes He allows bad things to happen.

In Isaiah 45: 6(b)-7, God says, “I am the Lord, and there is no other. I create the light and make the darkness. I send good times and bad times. I, the Lord, am the one who does these things.”

This is something I have wrestled with a lot since Brandon’s death. Maybe you do too. Maybe this makes you angry. It has made me angry at times. Maybe you don’t understand it. I don’t always understand it either, but you know what? I still love God. I still worship Him. I still serve Him because He is God.

In our heartbreak, in the tragedy, in the trials we experience here on earth, sometimes we lose sight of that big picture. A little jar, sealed shut by the dried-up ink beneath the lid, reminds me: God is still God, and I am not.

If I understood everything about God and what He does, He would be a very small God indeed. So, even when I don’t understand, even when I am angry, even when He doesn’t act in the way that I think He should, I still love, worship, and serve Him. Why? Because the God who allowed my son to die sent His Son to die for me, to die for Brandon, to die for all of us, so that we can live eternally together in Heaven where there will never be any more tears, pain, or death.

“For this is how God loved the world: He gave His one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.” -John 3:16