‘Pain, hurt can lead you to God,’ top AF chaplain says Published March 2, 2012 By Mike W. Ray Staff Writer TINKER AIR FORCE BASE, Okla. -- "The very thing that breaks your heart can be the light that leads you to God," the Air Force Chief of Chaplains asserted at the National Prayer Luncheon held at Tinker Air Force Base. "Your pain and hurt can lead you to God if you let it," Maj. Gen. Cecil R. Richardson told approximately 275 military personnel and civilians who attended the Feb. 22 event in the Tinker Club. To illustrate his theme, Chaplain Richardson referred to the story of Adoni-bezek in the first chapter of the Old Testament Book of Judges. "It's the most violent book in the Bible," the general said. Adoni-bezek was a surgeon of sorts, the chaplain quipped. "He loved to amputate thumbs and toes." The Israelites pursued and finally captured Adoni-bezek, and lopped off his thumbs and big toes. This portion of Scripture "teaches us three things," Chaplain Richardson said. The first lesson is: You reap what you sow. People whose big toes have been amputated cannot walk or run very well, he noted. The Book of Judges tells that Adoni-bezek had amputated the thumbs and toes of 70 kings, reducing them to eating table scraps. He captured kings, "ruined their lives and mocked them," Chaplain Richardson said. Now, "As I have done, so God hath requited me," Adoni-bezek laments. "If you sow good things, you are going to reap good things in your life," Chaplain Richardson said. "If you want kindness, sow kindness in your life." The second lesson is: Sometime you reap what you didn't sow. The Bible says 10,000 men were slain in the hunt for Adoni-bezek. Similar circumstances occurred last year in Libya, the chaplain recalled; innocent civilians died along with combatants. "We live in a violent world, and sometimes bad things happen to good people," he said. The third principle learned from the story of Adoni-bezek is: "No matter what you reap, you can find God in the harvest if you are willing to look." Adoni-bezek "found God in what happened to him," the chaplain said; he had no doubt that divine justice was being exacted when his four digits were chopped off by the Israelites. As Chief of Chaplains, Major General Richardson leads a corps of approximately 2,200 Air Force chaplains and their assistants from the active and Air Reserve components. Among them is Tinker's 72nd Air Base Wing chaplain, Lt. Col. David Terrinoni. "We have known each other for a long time," the general said recently. Chaplain Richardson plans to retire in two months after 41 years in the Air Force. Before joining the clergy he studied Russian at Syracuse University and was a Russian interpreter for the National Security Agency. In the late 1960s, he related, he read the Bible from cover to cover once a month for 16 consecutive months, 150 chapters per day. The National Prayer Luncheon started in 1942, during World War II, to "bring together the military and civilian leadership of the United States in recognition of the moral and spiritual values upon which our great nation is founded." The luncheon at Tinker opened with readings of passages from the Jewish Torah, the Muslim Quran, and the Christian Bible.