Rajendra Dawadi, the principal of a school just north of Nepal’s capital, was teaching a class when a staff member burst into the classroom, shouting that a major flood was headed toward them. Mr. Dawadi immediately told the nine hundred children on the campus to run to higher ground. Thirteen minutes after he heard the first warning, a deluge of water, mud, and debris destroyed the school.
Contrast his response with this news: Federal aviation officials have learned that two air-traffic controllers left work early before an Air Canada regional jet crashed into a firetruck at LaGuardia Airport in March. Two pilots died in the runway collision, and six others sustained serious injuries. The Federal Aviation Administration is moving to fire the two controllers.
A principal acts to save his students while air-traffic controllers who could have prevented a tragedy are off the job.
When disasters strike, is God more like the former or the latter?
It’s a question we all have reason to ask today. The Ross Fire west of Fort Worth continues to threaten some of my dearest friends. Tropical Storm Edouard made landfall on the Gulf Coast yesterday, bringing the threat of flooding rain to the part of Texas where I live. Three men from Granbury, one of my favorite North Texas towns, were hiking when floods swept through the Grand Canyon last Saturday; two are dead, and the third is still missing at this writing.
After the wife of Scottish minister Arthur John Gossip died suddenly at the age of fifty-four, he preached a now-famous sermon titled, “But When Life Tumbles In, What Then?”
What then, indeed?
“A need to trust something we cannot control”
In Psalm 75, the Lord proclaims: “When the earth and all its people quake, it is I who hold its pillars firm” (v. 3, NIV). What do we do when those “pillars” still seem to “quake”?
In Psalm 46:10, the Lord famously declares, “Be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!” “Be still” and “know” are two separate commands. I have always taken their relationship to mean, “Be still so that you can know that I am God.” Spend time in solitude with the Lord so you can sense more fully his presence. The times I have done the former, I have always experienced the latter.
But today I am reading their relationship differently: “Be still” because he is God. Stop trying to do what only he can do. Trust him to be sovereign over the universe and claim the fact that “the Lᴏʀᴅ of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress” (v. 11, my italics).
Of course, none of this is new truth. Why, then, is trusting God’s sovereignty in the hardest places often so hard to do?
After all, we constantly trust people and objects whose capacities we do not and often cannot verify. We trust doctors when they diagnose our illnesses and pharmacists when they hand us our medications. We trust those who prepare the food we eat. We trust that our air is not poisoned and our chair will support us.
This is the essence of what it means to be creatures rather than the Creator: we must trust our fellow creatures and ultimately our Creator to do what we cannot. As the Christian psychiatrist Curt Thompson notes, “We are invariably made for faith, to operate out of a need to trust something we cannot control.”
“We are unstable, but you make us firm”
But when it comes to trusting God, we face two enemies we do not face when we sit in a chair to eat a meal.
The first is Satan. He hates God but cannot attack him directly, so he attacks his beloved children. The best way to hurt me is to hurt my family. Our Father feels the same way.
So, when we are choosing whether or not to obey God’s word, the devil whispers in our ear, “Did God actually say . . .” (Genesis 3:1). If we insist that he did, the devil assures us that when we disobey, “You will not surely [fill in the consequence]” (v. 4). No one will know; no one will be hurt. To the contrary, “you will be like God” (v. 5), living your life as your own master.
This leads to the second enemy of trust in God: ourselves. As fallen people, we want to be our own God, to handle our own problems, to defeat our enemies and get the credit for our successes. At least, I do. I don’t like having to depend on God or others and do so only grudgingly and when I have no other alternative.
So, I need God to continue sanctifying my heart, to continue molding me into the character of his Son, to make me holier than I want to be. In The Imitation of Christ, Thomas à Kempis prayed,
There is no holiness where you have withdrawn your hand, O Lord; no profitable wisdom if you cease to rule over it; no helpful strength if you cease to preserve it. If you forsake us, we sink and perish; but if you visit us, we rise up and live again. We are unstable, but you make us firm; we grow cool, but you inflame us.
The author Michelle Van Loon is right: “A pilgrim is formed by the question, ‘Do I trust him?’”
Will you be a pilgrim today?
Quote for the day:
“Few delights can equal the presence of one whom we trust utterly.” —George MacDonald
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