When Pain Brings a New Beginning
On May 3, 1980, a thirteen-year-old girl named Cari Lightner was walking through her neighborhood in Fair Oaks, California. She was on her way to a church carnival. A drunk driver struck her from behind, passed out at the wheel, came to, and drove off. Cari was thrown 125 feet. She didn’t survive.
The driver? It was his third drunk driving accident. He’d been arrested just two days earlier.
Cari’s mother, Candy, was devastated. She had just gone through a divorce, moved to California, and was trying to start over. She wanted a new beginning. Instead, she got the worst phone call a parent can receive. But rather than let grief bury her, Candy channeled it. She founded Mothers Against Drunk Driving, MADD, and changed the laws of an entire nation.
New beginnings don’t always start the way we plan.
Sometimes they begin with a loss. A divorce. A career that crumbles. A diagnosis we didn’t see coming. The adage says life must go on, but some days that’s easier said than done.
And yet, God specializes in new beginnings.
In Exodus 12, the children of Israel were stuck. Generations of slavery in Egypt. Broken backs. Broken spirits. But God looked down and said, “It’s time.” He gave them a new calendar. A new identity. A new beginning that would change not just their lives, but ours, forever.
He told every household to select a lamb. Not just any lamb. One without blemish. Perfect. And on that night, the blood of that lamb was to be placed on the doorposts of every home. When the angel of death passed through, wherever the blood was, death passed over.
Do you see it? That lamb in Goshen was a preview. A foreshadowing. Centuries before Calvary, God was already painting a picture of the Cross. The Lamb who was slain from the foundation of the world was about to step into history. What can wash away my sin? The answer was being whispered in Egypt long before it was shouted from a hill outside Jerusalem.
And here’s the part that gets me. It was personal. Every family had to choose. Every father had to apply the blood to his own door. No one could do it for you. Salvation has always been a personal decision.
But once the blood was there, everyone could see it.
That’s still true today. When God gives you a new beginning, people notice. They see the change. They see the peace where panic used to live. They see someone who should’ve been buried by grief but is somehow still standing.
Candy Lightner took her pain and turned it into purpose. The Israelites took their faith and walked into freedom. And you? Whatever chapter just ended, God is already writing the next one.
New beginnings don’t require a perfect past. They require a perfect Lamb.
And friend, He’s already been chosen for you.
Keep Looking Up!
Heaven is closer than you think.
May God bless your day.
Related devotionals: Why God allows suffering · Why bad things happen to good people · Do you believe in happy endings?
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If today’s devotional spoke to your heart, my books carry these same themes deeper. Stories of God moving in ordinary lives, scripture for tired pastors and weary parents, and steady reminders that heaven is closer than you think.