Can we still believe in Providence?
Job 23:3, 8-10
Neil C Richards
I am writing this a few days into the New Year, when the awful toll
of death, sorrow and deprivation from the tsunami is still rising. As I
write I look out of my window on a quiet avenue in a small village in
Wales. My wife is in the next room and my children and grandchildren are
all alive and well. Yet in my mind I can see those scenes of
devastation: the endless search for bodies; mothers weeping for their
children; little groups of people huddled together; the aid agencies
struggling to get food and water and medicines to survivors in isolated
communities.
How can we possibly believe in providence or even the existence of a
God who is just and good? I feel the force of the question and I am
subdued. And yet… Is the doctrine of providence only for sunny days?
Can faith in God not survive the storms of life? Or do we do God a
service by relieving him of any part in, or even foreknowledge of, such
tragic events? And what kind of a God are we left with? Not one who is
on the throne and certainly not one in whom we can trust.
The fact is that Christian faith was ‘designed’ for a world like
ours - a world of sickness, disaster and death, a fallen, sinful world.
Job lived in such a world and faced the same sorrow and loss as we
witness today, and the same inner turmoil and perplexity with the ways
of God. Listen to his groans - Let the day perish on which I was
born. . . Why is light given to him who is in misery, and life to the
bitter soul? . . . Why is light given to a man whose way is hidden, whom
God has hedged in? Job gropes in the darkness and yearns to have
some glimpse of God in his sea of troubles. Oh that I knew where I
might find him. . .Behold, I go forward, but he is not there, and
backwards, but I do not perceive him. . . . But he knows the way that I
take; and when he has tried me I shall come out as gold.
So Job's faith survives the storm, and the truth is that faith must
wrestle and fight its way to glory. Those precious words of Job - surely
the high-water mark of his faith - I know that my Redeemer lives, and
at the last day he will stand upon the earth come like a shaft of
bright sunlight through the storm clouds. Even in the darkest hours, the
believer can say ‘The Lord God omnipotent reigns’ and ‘I know that
my Redeemer lives’. Even the horror of a tsunami cannot quench faith.
Let me come back to Christianity as a faith for a fallen world. As we
open the pages of the New Testament we read of a Saviour who came into
this world of earthquakes, storms and wars, and who in his infancy was
confronted by one of its cruellest tyrants. The mothers of Bethlehem
wept uncontrollably - like those on our televisions - for their children
butchered by Herod's soldiers as they sought the life of the Christ
child. The same Divine providence that protected Christ's life brought
him at last to the cross. Here in the death of the Son of God was the
most monstrous act of human cruelty and wickedness in all of history,
and yet the Bible makes it abundantly clear that God had a hand in it
all. He did not spare his own Son but gave him for us all . As Dr
John Duncan once put it: ‘Who delivered up Christ to die? Not the Jews
for envy; not Pilate for fear; not Judas for money; but God for love.’
If God was there in the darkness of Job's sufferings, and in the deepest
of all darkness at Calvary, then why not in all the seeming chaos and
darkness of these last days and weeks?
God does not explain all his ways to us, nor give an account to us of
his acts and purposes, but he has given us enough knowledge of himself
in his Word and in his Son for us to trust him and for faith to wrestle
through to victory. Calvary is the proof of his love. Sadly, the world
around us will take every opportunity to dethrone God. If they will have
him at all it must be as a powerless, benevolent spectator. Men will far
rather have chance and fate to rule, and prefer chaos to the sovereign
decrees and purposes of God.
But where grace has been at work and the love and power of a Saviour
is at work, there God will be worshipped as the King upon his throne,
and faith will stay its judgement until the Great Day when all will be
known. Now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face.
