Is God in control of all things? Yes! Does God control all things? I don’t know. What is the difference in these two questions? The first states that God is in control, but the second asks whether God chooses to control everything. When a tornado strikes a community did God control its movements for what ever reason or was the path the tornado took simply a random path. Stepping back one step was the storm itself ordained by God or was it the result of the random mixing of the proper atmospheric conditions.
Randomness or God’s will? Wrong place, wrong time or trials and testing?
The world it seems is seeing its share of disasters, typhoons in Southeast Asia, earthquakes in China, wild fires in the Western US, drought, floods, tornados, tsunamis. The list goes on and on and on. Are these disasters a result of the randomness of various climatic, tectonic, or human factors? The question that arises is where is God in this? Maybe a better question is what are we as Christ-followers doing to relieve the suffering that is going on around us? Perhaps the reason “why” is not as important as the question “How are we (am I) going to respond.
It’s all right to say I don’t know why, but it’s not all right to say I don’t care or I don’t want to be bothered with it.
Remember also that when disaster strikes it may take a long time to get back to ”normal.“ So after the initial trauma is over don’t forget about the people affected by the disaster.