Can we trust and rely on God all the time, in every circumstance? What about when disaster strikes? Is He really there? Is He really listening? Does He really care and answer?
In the midst of the emotional shock wave that has swept across our nation due to the still-burning fires in Southern California throughout this past week, finding that place where the Providence and grace of God merges with massive devastation and extreme loss is difficult, at best.
Almost 3,000 structures have been lost and over a half-million acres of land have been devastated by the fires. What do we say to those who have lost everything?
Much of what could be said may well seem glib or superficial. People aren’t looking for easy, pat answers, are they? No, they want real, definitive answers to there questions, especially the biggest one: “Where was God when this terrible disaster was taking place?” The second biggest question is, “Why didn’t He stop it?”
Trying to make sense of a huge disaster like this will always be difficult because, for those closest to it, they are absolutely not interested in platitudes and polished answers about, “God’s got it all under control,” and other such statements. Why should they be?
What interests them, of course, is knowing how to deal with the feelings that are rushing over them – anger, fear, doubt, grief, relief, helplessness and a myriad of other deep and penetrating emotions. Not all of them at once, I grant you, but they can come so fast upon one another that it can seem like they are all there at the same time.
Some of the feelings seem to be the exact opposite of some of the others, yet there they are, tightening one’s stomach, clenching one’s fists, quivering one’s lips, flooding one’s eyes with tears.
The very first point of peace we can turn to is the words of Jesus in Matthew 11:28: "Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.” If we are willing, we can turn to Him and lean on Him for strength, courage, help and hope in the midst of tragedy and disaster as well as our daily life.
Can we believe in a God who would allow such devastation and loss? Can there really be a caring and compassionate God who would stand by and watch a million people driven from their homes, thousands lose their homes, and some even lose their very lives?
These are questions to be expected. In fact, these are questions that it would seem odd if they were not being asked. When time has had a chance to elapse, life has gone on, other cares and concerns crowd their way into the forefront of our lives, most of the intensity, and constancy of these feelings and questions will fade into the shadows.
But, for now, these are the kinds of questions that resonate in the minds of many, along with ones like, “What do we do now?” “Where are we going to live?” “Is it really all gone?” Overwhelmed and hopeless, looking for hope and direction – that’s where thousands stand after something like this happens.
In Isaiah 46:9-11, God says through the prophet, "Remember the former things long past, For I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is no one like Me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things which have not been done, Saying, ’My purpose will be established, And I will accomplish all My good pleasure’; calling a bird of prey from the east, the man of My purpose from a far country. Truly I have spoken; truly I will bring it to pass. I have planned it, surely I will do it.”
This is where our hope begins; this is where our hope lies. God did not bring evil and sin and destruction into the world – we did that; we still do that. God in His sovereign grace overcomes the evil and brings good out of the ashes of destruction.
Will it do any good to mention that it could have been much, much worse? For some, it will. For others? Not right now, it won’t. Will it do any good to tell someone to keep praying when all they can see right now is the amount of loss that surrounds them? Again, for some it will. For others, not really.
One journalist reported that after a blaze in Santa Clarita, a man named Don Benson found his home and his prized 1957 Thunderbird in ruins. A neighbor drove by, sending a wish for better days: “I hope God is good to you.” “I believe in Him,” Benson called back, “but sometimes it wears thin.”
This, of course, is where people without faith in God find themselves incredulous at those who have faith in God. How can anyone believe in a God who would allow this kind of devastation to strike so many innocent people, people who do little to no harm to anyone else, people who do their best to do what is right, treat others fairly and be good, solid citizens?
I don’t believe that even if someone came up with the perfect answers to those questions in each and every situation that explained why all this loss made sense that it would be of any real help – in the short term – with dealing with what is going on in the hearts and minds of those without faith.
That really is the key, you know. Those who know God know where He was and know that, in the very simplest of terms, that God in His sovereign will and grace allowed all of this for reasons that only He knows – and that only He is entitled to know. There is a point of peace at the core of that knowledge that, with time, will bring a believer out of those painful feelings and confusion to a place of calm, reasoned peace and hope.
That means that those who know and follow God will face the same threats, the same trials, the same trouble and misfortune and distress and those who do not. The difference is, those who are God’s true children find solace and hope in Him.
There are things shared by those who know and love God about where God is in times of trouble that we can turn to for help and hope. In Psalm 46:1, David tells us, “God is our refuge and strength, A very present help in trouble.” And, in Psalm 145:18-19, “The LORD is near to all who call upon Him, To all who call upon Him in truth. He will fulfill the desire of those who fear Him; He will also hear their cry and will save them.”
Those who do not know God will, in many cases, become angry, bitter, and even more hopeless. Should they be successful and rebuilding their lives, those who do not believe in a sovereign God will claim the credit for themselves, not realizing, let alone acknowledging, that He was there in the midst of their success, guiding them along, making the way open for them to do and receive what was needed to get to that new place.
The disaster and aftermath of the fires in Southern California is markedly different from the devastation and its aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Many analysts have made this comparison, and I want to visit it for only a moment. I think it is worth it because it gives us the opportunity to see God at work in these kinds of situations and, from that, give us insight into the answers to the questions that naturally arise when these types of things happen.
The real key to all of this is not answering the why or the why not of God and His actions or inactions. The real key is in how God’s followers respond to those who have suffered loss by helping them deal with their loss and giving comfort and aid in changing the circumstances they now find themselves in.
For those who are believers who have been caught up in the disaster themselves, they can say with Paul, “we are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed (2 Corinthians 4:8-9).”
Both of these tragedies, as well as others we can all think of, saw an immediate and overwhelming response of people who were not stuck by the devastation. Both of these tragedies showed us a major difference in the underlying attitude toward community and individualism. Both of these tragedies shows us a point of demarcation between those who trust in God and those who trust in man.
God has given all of mankind the greatest personal power in all of creation – the power to choose. He does not force us into a relationship with Him. He allows us to accept or reject Him. He allows us to commit evil or good.
If He so chose, He could force us to be loving toward Him and toward others. He could force us to be and do good. What kind of relationship would that be? Would it even be a relationship at all? Would there be any dignity for any of us in that? How loving would that be of Him after all?
If we were required to live in controlled obedience, that would not be a relationship as God’s Word describes it. There would be no dignity, and there definitely would be no freedom to choose. In fact, faith wouldn’t even be required.
When our heart-cry becomes, “But God, how could You let something like this happen?", we need to ask ourselves some other questions.
How would we want God to act? How much or how little damage or death would we want Him to allow? Do we want Him to remove our free will and prevent all of us from doing bad?
Would we feel better if God allowed only certain people to suffer or be killed? Would we rather God allowed only the death of evil people when tragedy strikes? How would we know whom He should choose for that?
People choose every day to ignore God, to defy God, to go their own way and to commit horrible acts against others. In God’s economy, all of that is evil and deserving of death – violent, tormenting death here and for eternity. The real questions should be more along the lines of, is anyone good? Is anyone innocent? Is there anyone who has not done evil? Is there anyone deserving of being saved?
This earth that we love on is not a safe place, not really. Right now, there are between fifteen and twenty wars being fought around the world, depending on whether one classifies some as civil disorders instead of as wars. We see little if any effect of that in our own cities and neighborhoods because we are not currently actively combat-engaged with an enemy on our own soil. As we saw on 9/11, that can change in an instant.
Buildings can burn, rock slides can occur, rains and flood can come, hurricanes and tornadoes can race across the land, forests and homes can burn, and any number of other disasters can strike us without much if any warning at all. Do we expect God to avert them all? Do we expect God to avert only the worst of these tragedies? How do we agree on which ones to select?
James 4:6 tells us, “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” And, as sinful human beings who naturally demand our own way, we are the proud that He opposes. Why would we think that He would intervene?
If we can’t even agree on whether or not God exists, how could we possibly agree on which, if any, bad things to allow and to whom? One or a few of us would have to step in and become God, wouldn’t we?
The real problem is that all of us – at some time or another, in some way or another – push away from God and resist His sovereign will in our lives. We can easily compare ourselves to a child-murderer or a terrorist and feel justified in expecting much better treatment from God than people like that deserve.
None of us is exempt; none of us is immune. We are all deserving of His wrath and judgment. He has told us, "There is none righteous, not even one; there is none who understands, there is none who seeks for God; all have turned aside, together they have become useless; there is none who does good, there is not even one. Their throat is an open grave, with their tongues they keep deceiving, the poison of asps is under their lips; whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness; their feet are swift to shed blood, destruction and misery are in their paths, and the path of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes (Romans 3:10-18)."
Where is the solace in that?
We find solace in that because of something else He tells us through one of His closest and dearest friends and followers, Simon Peter: “After you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself perfect, confirm, strengthen and establish you (1 Peter 5:10).”
God knows the pain and suffering that are in the world, the pain and suffering that we endure as part of the human race – He came and endured it with us and for us for a time.
Three verses in Romans 5 give us the balance point to stand on when examining the question, “Where is God when disaster strikes?” Verse 6 tells us, “For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.” Verse 8 tells us, “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”
And, Romans 5:10 gives us this, “For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.”
It is difficult at best to keep these things in mind when tragedy and disaster strike. We want someone to be at fault; we want someone to blame. We don’t want to think about the fact that there might be something about us that could have anything to do with the bad that is befalling us.
We have to know and find peace in the fact that there is evil in the world and we are a part of it; and in the fact that, despite that fact, God loves us and is standing by, waiting to hold us, to help us, to strengthen us, and to give us hope.
It is our part to seek Him, for when we seek Him with our whole heart, He will be found by us (Jeremiah 29:13). For those of us not caught up in the tragedy and devastation, it is our part to reach out, to be the heart and hands and help from God, to be the living demonstration of His promises to those in trouble.
After all, we are His Body here on earth. When people experience God’s love through real, tangible, personal acts of loving kindness, they have a much better chance of coming to the place where they can know and accept the reality of not only His existence, but also His interest in their lives.
It is not up to us to be right about our theology; it is up to us to be faithful with the love He has shown to us. Let us seek to do so, not only in the aftermath of the fires in Southern California this week, or in Indonesia and the rim of the Indian Ocean after the devastating earthquake and tsunami in 2006, or in the Deep South after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Let us seek to make it an every-day-all-day part of our lives here and now as we touch the lives of those God has brought within our sphere of influence. After all: what else are we here for?
Let us share the hope that is in us with those with little or no hope: "Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful…These things I have spoken to you, so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world (John 14:27; 16:33)."
Let’s pray.
