When Sovereignty Hurts

"Jesus to Thee I lift my eyes

To Thee I breathe my soul's desires.

Are you not mine, my living Lord?

And can my hope, my comfort die?

Fixed on the everlasting Word

That Word which built the earth and sky..."

-"Jesus, I Lift My Eyes

There's something scary about sovereignty. The fact that God has complete and total power over all circumstances - that He can and does preordain situations - is difficult theology to accept.

Why? It's hard to wrap our minds around a God who has the power to stop all pain and suffering, and yet allows it to continue. He ordains cancer. He predestines hospital stays. Stillborn children are not people who slipped through the cracks of God's plans. There are no car accidents. God sovereignly appoints all circumstances.

This is not a fact that is easy to say or swallow, but it's the only option that can be true. If we don't believe that God allows suffering, then we must believe He doesn't have control over it. If we believe God is obligated as a God of love to stop all suffering, and he He doesn't, then we must assume He can't. Because whether or not we think it should, suffering does exist.

But my goal today is not to write persuasively on God's sovereignty. Maybe another day. The thought that has been pressed into my mind for the past week or so is God's trustworthiness. My mind has traveled like this:

Is God in control? Yes.

Can He stop the pain? Yes.

But what if He doesn't? Is God still worthy of my trust?

If I trusted a friend to catch me, but instead they let me fall flat on my face, my confidence in them would quickly evaporate. Even if they explained that they let me fall to help me grow as a person, I'd probably be ticked. What are friends for, anyway?

In a way, this is exactly what God does. He demands that you trust Him. He tells you to obey. Inevitably, suffering then arrives in some form. Your heart betrays you. Your wallet is stolen. You watch your best friend fight for his life. You then must continue loving and worshipping Him, knowing all the while that He didn't prevent your pain.

On the surface, that's what life is like. We know that we can do nothing to divert or foretell God's plans. We just strap ourselves in for a tumultuous ride, secretly wondering whether God ever loved us at all. We ask whether He's forgotten us.

But it's here we find something unexpected in the suffering equation - something to sing about.

Him. He doesn't forget us.

We forget Him. We don't forget that He could have prevented all our pain if He wanted to - we dwell on that quite a lot. But we forget Jesus as Himself. We dwell on the blessings that He withholds, not the supreme blessing He constantly offers - Himself.

God's sovereignty does not eclipse His loving nature, His faithfulness or mercy. Just because He ordains pain doesn't mean He ignores our prayers or wants us to suffer alone. After all, it is the same God who once ordained His own Son's death for our sakes. Giving everything to pay for us, do you think He'd quickly let us go?