Inside Story for Friday 14th of February 2025

By Andrew McChesney

Grace Babcock woke up suddenly in the middle of the night to the sound of an angry voice. “You don’t know,” the voice said. “You don’t understand.”

Image © Pacific Press

Grace wasn’t scared. If anything, she was annoyed about being woken up in her one-bedroom apartment at the Holbrook Indian School, where she worked as a teacher. She listened.

“God is using you like a puppet,” the voice said. “There is stuff that you don’t know. You are following God blindly, and God is tyrannical.”

Grace had been struggling to trust God. The recent death of a Holbrook student in a bus accident had hit her hard. She had many questions for God, but she hadn’t really wanted to talk to Him about them.

Now the voice was accusing God, and she didn’t like that, either.

“Go away,” she said. “I don’t want to talk to you.”

The voice fell silent.

But the accusations against God hung heavily in the room. Grace didn’t want to talk to God, but she thought that it was only fair that He be given an opportunity to respond. She asked God about each specific accusation that she had heard. Silence. She fell asleep.

The next day, Grace went to a nature spot where she often liked to think. Sitting on a brown rock, she brought up the accusations again to God. Silence. As night fell, she went home.

The next day, she returned to the nature spot. Again, silence. But as she walked home, she sensed a voice say, “You don’t need to know the answers to these questions that you are asking. You need to have faith and trust.”

“That’s true,” she said. “I don’t need to know the answers. But I do need to know that You are good. Right now, I don’t know that You are good.”

At home, Grace opened the Adult Sabbath School Bible Study Guide and began to read. As she read, she sensed a voice say, “Look up.”

Looking up, she saw a picture from a coloring book on her refrigerator. The picture had been given to her by a fifth-grade student, and it depicted Jesus’ cross and the words of John 3:16. “You did that for us, Jesus,” Grace said. “Since You did that, You are good. You really are good. I can trust You, even though I don’t have answers to all my questions.”

This mission story offers an inside look at a previous Thirteenth Sabbath project. Grace Babcock teaches elementary students at the US-based Holbrook Seventh-day Adventist Indian School, which received the Thirteenth Sabbath Offering in 2021. Thank you for supporting the spread of the gospel with this quarter’s Thirteenth Sabbath Offering on March 29.

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