Title: If God Should Choose: The Authorized Story of Jim and Roni Bowers
Author: Kristen Stagg
Publisher: Moody Press
Number of pages: 221
Begun: April 4, 2009
Finished: April 7, 2009

If God Should Choose is the story of a young ABWE missionary couple who in 2001 were flying in a small plane over the Amazon when they were shot down by the Peruvian air force which had assumed them to be drug traffickers. I remember cursorily following the news about the incident back when it happened, but had not given it much thought in recent days until I downloaded and listened to a Mother’s Day sermon by John Piper. In the sermon, titled “To Be a Mother is a Call to Suffer,” Piper utilizes Jim Bowers’ testimony as a primary example of the fact that God’s sovereign plan for a parent (and really for any Christian) may well be a call to suffer loss for His sake. Piper isolates one statement from Jim’s memorial service testimony in which Jim dubs the instrument of both his wife’s and infant’s deaths “a sovereign bullet.” Both Tim and I could not help but be moved by the sermon, and it was somewhat ironic that just a week later our host in Mentor offered me this book which recounts the Bowers’ story.

The thing that struck me the most about the book was just how “normal” this young couple was. Granted, it’s not just anyone who leaves the comforts of an American home to become a missionary family living on the Amazon in a homemade houseboat barely larger than an RV. But even so, their struggles with things like finances, relationships and infertility were no different than we and a lot of other people with whom we all regularly brush shoulders experience. And yet within a few hours time, the Bowers went from relative obscurity to becoming the centerpiece of an international news event. Shot down without warning, 35-year-old Veronica “Roni” Bowers and adopted 7-month-old daughter Charity were killed instantly by the same bullet, fellow missionary pilot Kevin Donaldson was seriously injured, and Jim Bowers and 6-year-old Cory, though uninjured, were forced through the ordeal of a major cockpit fire, a nosedive into the Amazon, and a grueling afternoon spent guarding their loved ones’ expired bodies while waiting for all the government officials to make their assessments of the situation.

In addition to providing historical background and context, the author dedicates the first part of each chapter and then two entire chapters at the end to a detailed play-by-play of the incident. It truly was remarkable to learn of the many ways in which God provided superhuman grace to Jim and Cory throughout this trial and into the broad spotlight where Jim was able to publicly affirm that "though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him. " The most inspiring thing for me was to see illustrated a real-life, grace-filled, totally-submissive response to human loss. In the memorial service testimony that took place only one week after the incident, Jim listed out 14 different reasons why he knew his circumstances were Divinely purposed and enacted.

Equally moving is the encouragement Steve Saint gave publicly to 6-year-old Cory at the same service. He reminisced about how he had lost his own father, Nate Saint, at nearly the same age as Cory, and how people had often commented to him and his mother about that horrible “tragedy.”

And you know what? Now when people say, ‘That was a tragedy,’ I know they are wrong. In life, many of us Christians have tried to preach and have tried to believe that the life of a believer is all joy and no pain. That isn’t so. And we’ve tried to believe that for those people who don’t know the Lord as we do, their life is all pain and no joy, and that isn’t so. You know what the difference is? For them, the pain is fundamental and the joy is superficial because it won’t last. For us, the pain is superficial and the joy is fundamental. … Cory, I believe that when you’re as old as I am that you’ll understand like I do now, Jesus never wastes a hurt. (emphases mine)

This book was profitable for me in that many of these same concepts have been reinforced in my recent study of the book of Job (guided by Layton Talbert’s book Beyond Suffering). I’ll close with the poem Elizabeth Elliott read at the memorial service for Roni and Charity Bowers:

I stood a mendicant (a beggar) of God before His royal throne
And begged Him for one priceless gift, which I could call my own.
I took the gift from out his hand, but as I would depart
I cried, ‘But Lord, this is a thorn and it has pierced my heart.
This is a strange, a hurtful gift, which Thou hast given me.’
He said, ‘My child, I give good gifts and gave My best to thee.’
I took it home and though at first the cruel thorn hurt sore,
As long years passed I learned at last to love it more and more.
I learned He never gives a thorn without this added grace,
He takes the thorn to pin aside the veil which hides His face.

Martha Snell Nicholson