Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People?
Joshua Hugh Wooden was the kind of man you’d trust with your life and never think twice about it.
He was a farmer in a small town in Indiana. A deacon at the local church. The kind of father who heated bricks on the potbelly stove on cold winter nights, wrapped them in blankets, and tucked them at the foot of his boys’ beds. No electricity. No running water. Just a man who read the Bible to his family by lamplight and treated every living thing, mules, dogs, even a stubborn colt, with a gentleness that made people stop and watch.
One day, Joshua invested everything he had in a herd of hogs. He mortgaged the farm to buy them. Then he purchased a batch of cholera vaccine to protect his investment.
The vaccine was bad. Every hog died. And just like that, the Wooden family lost their farm.
If you’re looking for a man who did everything right and still got hit, there he is.
Joshua didn’t sue. Didn’t curse. Didn’t shake his fist at God. He gathered his four sons and said something they carried for the rest of their lives: “Blaming, cursing, hating doesn’t help you. It hurts you.”
No bitterness. Just faith. Steady as a heartbeat.
If you’ve ever been that person. The one who played by the rules and still got blindsided, you know the question isn’t really theological. It’s personal. It’s gut-level. Why me? I did everything I was supposed to do.
Jesus never promised fair. In John 16:33, He said plainly, “In this world you will have trouble.” That’s not a maybe. That’s a guarantee. But here’s what He promised instead: “Take heart, I have overcome the world.”
Paul understood this in a way few people do. In Romans 5:3-5, he wrote that “suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame.” Suffering isn’t the end of the sentence. It’s the beginning of something God is building in you that cannot be built any other way.
Job knew it, too. He lost his children, his health, his wealth, and his reputation — all in a single day. His wife told him to curse God and die. His friends told him it must be his fault. And Job sat in the ashes and said, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him” (Job 13:15).
God never promised fair. He promised faithfulness.
Joshua Hugh Wooden lost his farm. But his son, John, the quiet boy who watched his father’s faith in the worst of times, went on to become the most legendary basketball coach in American history. Ten national championships. Four undefeated seasons. And for the rest of his life, he kept a small card his father gave him with seven simple rules for living.
The farm is long gone. But the faith? The faith is still bearing fruit four generations later.
Bad things happen to good people. But God wastes nothing. Not the pain. Not the loss. Not even the bad vaccine. He takes what was meant to break you and turns it into the very thing that builds the people who come after you.
That’s not fair. That’s grace.
Keep Looking Up!
May God bless your day.
Related devotionals: Why God allows suffering · When pain brings new beginning · Fight discouragement
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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.