I just finished a book by Jerry Bridges called God Took Me By the Hand, which is essentially his memoir. He wrote the book when he was 83-years-old in order to demonstrate to his readers that God's providence is at work in the life of every believer. "God’s providence is His constant care for and His absolute rule over all His creation for His own glory and the good of His people," he writes. In other words, there are no coincidences.
Bridges was able to look back over his own life and trace the hand of God providentially moving him in and out of different circumstances that he had no idea were related at the time. And at 83, he was able to get a glimpse of how everything worked together for his good and God's glory. And that's why I love reading Christian (auto)biographies: I can see how God used everything in that person's life — the good and the bad, the successes and the failures, and even the terrible tragedies — for good. I can read the last chapter and know how the story ends.
Those of us who are still living our stories don't have that benefit, but we do have what every believer before us had: the hand of God guiding us along our journey. Providence. And since we know God's providence is always at work, we can be sure that nothing happens by chance. God is in every detail of our lives.
St. Augustine wrote, "Nothing happens that the Almighty does not will should happen, either by permitting it or by himself doing it." Of course, the truth of God being in complete control provides no comfort unless we also whole-hardheartedly believe the truth that God is good, and everything He does is good (Psalm 119:68). In fact, a sovereign God who isn't good is actually a terrifying thought.
In the Book of Ruth, when tragedy struck Naomi, she never questioned God's sovereignty: "The Lord’s hand has turned against me" (Ruth 1:13). But she did struggle to accept that such tragedy could come from the hand of a good God, and so she became very bitter. “Don’t call me Naomi. Call me Mara,” she answered,“for the Almighty has made me very bitter. ... Why do you call me Naomi, since the Lord has pronounced judgment on me, and the Almighty has afflicted me?”
Like Naomi, we all struggle to see God's perfect goodness in the midst of tragedy. In our minds, a good God who has complete control would never allow that terminal illness diagnosis, or that premature death of our loved one, or that birth defect, or that job loss, or that (fill-in-the-blank). He would surely stop every bad thing from happening to us! But God's goodness doesn't shield us from suffering. It didn't shield Jesus from suffering, either. In fact, because God is good and He loves us, He sent Jesus to the cross.
In one of his other books, Trusting God: Even When Life Hurts, Bridges writes, "If we are going to learn to trust God in adversity, we must believe that just as certainly as God will allow nothing to subvert His glory, so He will allow nothing to spoil the good He is working out in us and for us." Or, as Andrew Wilson put it in his article Goodness and Me, "If God has done something, it is good. End of story."
As we get older, we might be able to look back and see how it was God's goodness that led us into a trial, because we have the benefit of seeing what was waiting for us on the other side of it. (Bridges, for example was able to see how God used the 4 birth defects he was born with as a tool later in life to teach him to slow down.) But, for all of those trials we do understand, there will be some that we don't, and likely never will.
While don't have perfect understanding, what we do have is the matter-of-fact truth of God's goodness, and the assurance that God’s care for us is constant, His rule over His creation is absolute, and His glory and our good are the ultimate goals.
"Whenever you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear this command behind you: 'This is the way. Walk in it'" (Isaiah 30:21).
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