All God's Children Ministry With Disabled Persons

Chapter IGod Does Not Create AccidentsThe Question of "Why?"Ask anyone who has been awakened out of spiritual slumber with an ice-cold splash of suffering. "Why?" is often the question. "Why me, Lord?"In reality, those few words are rarely spoken out of a heart that is honestly searching for answers. Initially, the question may be voiced in resentment, bewilderment, or frustration. A person recently diagnosed with a disabling impairment or a progressive disease may clench his or her fist in anger against God.There may come a time when these same people search through Scripture trying to discern the real purpose behind everything that has happened. Sometimes, though, they are compelled to face a verse like Romans 11:33: "Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments and his paths beyond tracing out!"Our Understanding Is FiniteJ. I. Packer, in his book Knowing God, tackles this problem of our inability to understand the purposes of God behind every event:Now the mistake that is commonly made is to suppose that the gift of wisdom consists in an ability to see why God has done what He has done in a particular case, and what He is going to do next.... People feel that if they were really walking closer to God, so that He could impart wisdom to them freely, then they would discern the real purpose of everything that happened to them.... If they end up baffled, they put it down to their own lack of spirituality. Such people spend much time wondering why God should have allowed this or that to take place.... Christians may drive themselves almost crazy with this kind of futile inquiry.1What makes us think that even if God explained his ways to us, we would be able to understand them? It would be like pouring million-gallon truths into our one-ounce brains. Even the great apostle Paul admitted that, though never in despair, he was often perplexed (2 Cor. 4:8). One Old Testament author has written, "As you do not know the path of the wind, or how the body is formed in a mother''s womb, so you cannot understand the work of God, the Maker of all things" (Eccl. 11:5).Yet, even though "there are secrets the Lord your God has not revealed to us" (Deut. 29:29, LIVING BIBLE), we are never lacking hope. There is an answer.God Is SovereignLet God''s own words to Moses speak for themselves: "The LORD said to him, "Who gave man his mouth? Who makes him deaf or dumb? Who gives him sight or makes him blind? Is it not I, the LORD?''" (Exod. 4:11). And hear the words of Jeremiah the prophet: "Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that both calamities and good things come?" (Lam. 3:38). The Psalmist says, "For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother''s womb.... My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be" (Ps. 139:13, 15-17).Scripture indicates that not only is God sovereign to physical injuries or illness, but he is Lord over the changes and alterations that transpire within the womb.Does this mean that God wants disease and injury? The key here is how we use the word want. God doesn''t want disease to exist in the sense that he enjoys it. He hates it just as he hates all the other results of sin-death, guilt, sorrow, and catastrophes. But God must want disease to exist in the sense that he wills or chooses for it to exist. If he didn''t, he would wipe it out immediately.So God is neither frustrated nor hindered by Satan''s schemes, but he permits suffering to serve his own ends and accomplish his own purposes.There Is a PurposeAlthough suffering is largely a mystery, it is not a mystery without direction. God has his reasons. Whether it is to mold Christian character, to stimulate empathy toward others who hurt, to refine one''s faith, or to focus one''s attention on eternal glories above, oNewman, Gene is the author of 'All God's Children Ministry With Disabled Persons' with ISBN 9780310593812 and ISBN 0310593816.