Ordained and Allowed
“My soul is weary with sorrow;
strengthen me according to your word.”
Psalm 119:28 (NIV)
Grief is defined as the experience of coping with loss.
Charlie Kirk’s assassination last week was certainly a great loss on many levels: the loss of a husband for his wife; the loss of a father for his two young children; the loss of a leader and cultural icon for Gen Z; the loss of an entrepreneur for a multimillion-dollar business and its employees; the loss of a potential future president of the United States. There is also grief for the killer’s family. Imagine how painful it must have been for that father to realize what his son had done and then turn him over to the authorities. Finally, there is the collective grief associated with the great divisions that currently exists within our country. How do we move forward in our grief when so many are rejoicing with this loss?
Last year I had the privilege of meeting a special needs mom whose child has Down syndrome. During our conversation, she turned to me and tearfully asked, “Did God ordain or allow this?”
“Both,” I responded gently before explaining further.
Before Adam and Eve’s Fall in the Garden of Eden, there was no death, disability, brokenness, or suffering. Everything that God made was good (Genesis 1:31). But after their Fall, God allowed Adam and Eve – and all of us- to experience the resulting consequences of sin. Those consequences included death, disability, and suffering. Author and disability advocate Joni Eareckson Tada, a quadriplegic for the last 58 years writes, “God permits what he hates to accomplish what he loves.”
God allowed an assassin to murder Charlie Kirk. He could have stopped the bullet, but he didn’t.
More importantly, however, Scripture clearly teaches that God is sovereign. He reigns and rules over every single event in history. God is sovereign all the time and everywhere. He is sovereign over kings and kingdoms; special needs kids with genetic anomalies; infertility; a senior moment during a presidential debate; and an assassin’s bullet that hit its mark. God reigns, rules, and governs his creation. Our world and our lives are determined by God’s sovereignty. Our hearts, however, are determined by our responses to that reality.
Charles Spurgeon reflecting on God's sovereignty writes:
There is no attribute more comforting to His children than that of God’s sovereignty. Under the most adverse circumstances, in the most severe trials, they believe that Sovereignty has ordained their afflictions, that Sovereignty overrules them, and that Sovereignty will sanctify them. There is nothing for which the children ought more earnestly to contend than the doctrine of their Master over all creation — the Kingship of God over all the works of His own hands — the Throne of God and His right to sit upon that throne . . . It is God upon the throne that we love to preach. It is God upon the throne whom we trust.
But God isn’t just a sovereign God who reigns and rules. He is also the Sovereign King who served and suffered for us. Jesus humbled himself (Philippians 2:7), became a man, and came to earth to go, not to a throne, but to a cross. On the cross Jesus was abandoned by his Father, so that we would never be abandoned in our suffering. We have a Suffering Sovereign who knows and understands what it is to suffer. God never wastes our suffering, but can use it in ways we may not ever fully understand.
Wherever we are today, we can rest in the knowledge that God is sovereign. He reigns and rules and nothing takes him by surprise. He is also a good, good Father (Matthew 6:8). Both of those truths provide much needed security and peace in the middle of our suffering, grief, and loss.
Maltbie Babcock understood God’s sovereignty when he wrote the hymn This Is My Father’s World in 1901. Normally we think of this song as a celebration of God’s creativity and design of nature, but stanzas three and four celebrate God’s sovereignty.
This is my Father’s world
O let me ne’er forget
That though the wrong seems oft so strong,
God Is the Ruler yet.
This is my Father’s world
Why should my heart be sad?
The Lord is King; let heavens ring!
God reigns; let earth be glad!
Knowing the Who, makes the "What?" and the "Why?" less overwhelming. Right now the wrong does indeed “seem oft so strong,” but God still reigns and rules. And because he does, we can rejoice even in the midst of our grief and sorrow.