Who's in Control

 

When we encounter great difficulties in life, we wonder what God is doing. Of course, if you believe there is no god, then it is a random occurrence and you just happened to be unlucky. We never question God when things are going well.

It is a common Christian platitude to simply say that we must have faith that He knows what He is doing and that we do not see the big picture. Charles Spurgeon, a 19th century preacher, taught that if we could understand our faith, it would be a faith that comes from our own understanding and it would not be a faith at all.

 

A faith that we do not understand comes from God because his ways are higher than our ways and his thoughts are above our thoughts. If you and I could create a universe, and in that vast expanse, create a tiny bubble of survivability for a bio-diverse creation such as we experience here on earth, we would have no trouble understanding all things. But we are made in the image of God, and not Gods ourselves. That there is mystery and huge questions should not surprise us. 

It is easy to believe that God is control of the universe, and much larger and more complex areas of creation, but does he control or even care about the minutia of our small lives in the great scheme of things.

 Place all activity in the universe on a graduated scale from the greatest to the least, the sun moon and stars down to the bug crawling in the garden. At what point on that scale does God cease to care, control, or govern in some way? Does He stop at the orbiting planets? Does He stop at the moon and the tides? Does He stop at the seasons? Does He stop at the rising of the sun, and setting of the same? Does He stop at the hour, the minute, or the second? If He is big enough to create it all, He is big enough to control it all. Why should we think that the occurrences in our lives are random when we are the height of his creation?

If he cares, and if he is aware and even controls, why should we be anxious or fearful?

The death of a young mom (see last post) takes on a special meaning if this is true. There is a strategy and a plan here, but we do not understand it. But that is OK because we know there is purpose. We all need meaning in life, an understanding of why things happen and what things are all about. These meanings are above our understanding and it is OK. Our job is to incorporate this knowledge into our difficult task of learning to live with the new reality of our loss. The pain of loss and the grief we experience are very real, but underlying all the difficult adjustments is the relief that it is not in our hands, but it is in somebodies. God's.