Choose

"For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways," declares the LORD. "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts" (Isa 55:8-9).

Last week we recognized the 10th anniversary of 9/11. Last week, in my remembering that event, I recalled the certainty that God "works all things after the counsel of His will." I assured my readers that God has a purpose -- a purpose for good -- in all that occurs. I have to point out, with God's words from Isaiah in mind, that I don't know what that is. I can be absolutely certain that the parents who lose a child to leukemia, for instance, can know for a fact that God was in control, that it happened with His full knowledge and that it was for certain good, but I lack the information required to tell them what that good is. You see, His thoughts are not my thoughts.

I know from Scripture that tsunamis and earthquakes and hurricanes and floods and all are actually caused by God (Amos 3:6), and I know that God is good. But His ways are so far beyond mine that it would be foolhardy to suggest I understand all that goes into that or all that comes out of it. I can know that God did it and that God is good, but, given the distance between God's ways and thinking and mine, it's highly unlikely that I'll get a glimpse of His plan in it.

That's why I avoid the details inherent in the question, "Why, God?" People want to know why God would allow those people to suffer so or why this family had such great loss or "why do bad things happen to good people?" and I would not venture to give details. His ways are not my ways.

Here's what I recommend. Given that God is sovereign and given that God is good and given that God is always right and given that God Himself claims such events for Himself, what will you believe? I can't give you particulars in your case, but I can assure you that indeed God's enemies "meant evil against me, but God meant it for good" (Gen 50:20). So who are you going to believe? God's enemies or God? Since I have always found God to be reliable, I will say with Joshua, "Choose for yourselves today whom you will serve ... but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD" (Josh 24:15).