Is God Still God When the Worst Thing Happens?

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Is God Still God When the Worst Thing Happens?

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Is God Still God When the Worst Thing Happens? 

#trustHiminthedark 

Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness. (Isaiah 41:10)

In my book, So You Love a Prodigal, I devoted an entire section to the reasons we can’t quit when terrible things happen. In that section, I say that no one will ever be able to explain to our satisfaction why tragedy has come into our lives. And that was especially true for my family and me when my oldest son Buddy passed away a little more than two weeks ago at the age of 49.

To say I am devastated by this loss doesn’t even begin to describe my state of mind or my broken heart right now. Will I be able to trust God through this and not “charge Him foolishly?” (Job 1:22) Can I accept the sovereignty of God when His will was to take my son although I had begged Him with everything within me to perform a miracle and give Buddy back to me? I was reminded of what I wrote about Sandra Cheatwood and the sovereignty of God:

“My friends Ronnie and Sandra Cheatwood lost their only son in a car accident caused by a drunk driver. Such devastation in their lives cannot be explained, and it began with a knock on the door in the middle of the night. Both parents struggled with trying to understand why their son, whose life goal was to be a medical missionary, had been taken from them. Ronnie wrote about their terrible loss in his book, The Storm in the Middle of the Night.

"Sandra told me what she learned more than any other thing is that God is sovereign. She learned He is not some indulgent grandfather or Santa Claus, but rather the omnipotent, omniscient God of the universe, who does what He does for His own reasons and without consulting us. She came to realize it wasn’t her place (nor is it ours) to question why God chooses to do things in a certain way." (So You Love a Prodigal, Chapter 11)

I thought I knew what she meant when she talked about the sovereignty of God. But what I thought I understood didn’t even scratch the surface. I’m learning that accepting God’s sovereignty isn’t the same as submitting to a ruler whom we must obey without question. That's not at all what God's sovereignty is about.

Instead, it’s like relying on the pilot when the plane you’re in has hit some terrible turbulence and realizing he knows best how to handle both the storm and the plane. In spite of our fear, in spite of the shaking of the plane, in spite of our helplessness, the pilot knows better than we how to handle our plane in the storm. The difference is, when God pilots the plane, it is never going to crash, despite the fierceness of the storm or the shaking of the plane.

It takes the grace of God and every ounce of my will just to get out of bed each morning when my grief is so overwhelming. And I will never understand why God took my son. How could I? How can I understand the plan of an infinite God with my limited human understanding? All I can do…all you can do….by trying to understand a loss as terrible as this is to take ourselves to the precipice of hopelessness and fall into the abyss of despair.

As I’m facing this thing I prayed I never would and walking a path I never chose to walk, I covet your prayers. By God’s grace, I will continue one day at a time and sometimes one minute at a time. I know I’ll never be the same. My life will never be the same. How could it be? But I know in my heart that God is still God even on this wilderness path, and He is walking every step of it with me. Faced with the choice of trusting my God in the dark or raging against my fate, I will choose to trust Him…just for today.

Challenge for Today: What might happen if we, just for today, chose hope over despair?