The arson fire on Aug. 6 that burned our uninsured house has put the thought in my mind that there is something we are meant to learn, or something we are meant to share with people, connected to our experience with the fire.
Which may may not have anything to do with the main subject of this blog.
People have been commenting to us about how shocked they are, and what a tragedy the fire was. Yet I find myself feeling very blessed at this moment as I think on the fire.
No, the fire was not a good thing, and yes we have had a great loss, but I see more and more, as times passes, how the hand of God was yet with us, and how His mercy never fails us.
Yes, someone might counter. But if he is a Good God, why did he even allow it to happen at all?
Glad you asked, oh hypothetical person of my narrative. Let us start with this:
“all things work together for good to them that love the Lord, to them which are called according to His purpose.”
Note, it does not say that all things are good, just that they work together for good.
This is an acknowledgement that not all things are good, and that bad things can happen to good people, just as good things happen to bad people. I suppose the question here is why. Why does a sovereign God allow bad things to happen? How can he allow them to happen and still be sovereign?
Let me try a parent analogy. God is our Father, after all. A parent can be a helicopter parent, and this is what I think most people who complain here expect him to be, at least whenever they suffer because of something. They expect God to helicopter in on every situation where it goes “wrong” for them, and make it “right”, but to stay out of any other situation where they want to do things their way and not God’s way, as long as things aren’t going “wrong”.
But perhaps God is a parent in a much more realistic way. A parent teaches, and guides, and often lets a child try something that may cause them minor hurt or distress, in hopes that the child learns to avoid greater hurt and distress. The child becomes an adult and is able to exercise his own will to avoid what he should avoid, and do what he should do, without need of the parent at all times.
This is all possible because the sovereign God, the Creator, gave His creatures a free will, and so chose to allow them to suffer the consequences of their actions, and the actions of others, just as they must “suffer” the consequences of God’s actions, and God must “suffer” the consequences of our actions. And of all those uses of suffering, I think God’s suffering is the greatest.
He loses no Sovereignty to allow us free will, and we all, God included, stand to gain a great deal from our exercise of free will. If we didn’t and if God didn’t, he wouldn’t have chosen to go through with it.
So blaming God for our suffering, for the fire, etc., is wrong and short-sighted. There is no need to let God off the hook – he was never on it. Any such hook was made by ourselves or the others around us, and if anything, God is letting many of us off the hook and we should, as always, be thankful, first that all the evil that befalls us is not due us, and second, that all the blessing we get we don’t have to earn, and couldn’t earn if we tried.
At The Rainbow 