WHY OR WHATEVER
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Sometimes, it can be hard to make sense of why things happen in our world. Whether in the natural world, in history and nations, or in our personal lives, we wrestle with cause and effect, with finding reasons for events that shape our lives and our world, and with wondering where God fits in our understanding. If God has foreknowledge of the things that happen to us, does that mean He causes them, that He ordains them? Or simply that He is aware of them as things that happen? And does this mean that somehow He could order our lives differently? How do we try to make sense when it seems that God sometimes intervenes and at other times is silent? It is difficult to understand our lives from God’s perspective, from the standpoint of eternity, or the uncertainties of how and why “time and chance happen to them all” (Ecclesiastes 9:11). But, while we might not have full answers to many of these questions, the God portrayed by Isaiah—“I am the first and I am the last” (Isaiah 44:6)—is a God who is always with us whatever our circumstances, challenges, or trials, and whatever our questions or uncertainties. God insists that there will always be a contrast in our world between those who worship idols—other gods or other priorities—and those who trust in Him.
Part of this contrast will be how they respond to the circumstances and questions of life and our world. Those who make and follow idols “will be brought down to terror and shame” (Isaiah 44:11), while His message to those who follow Him is, repeatedly, “Do not be afraid.” He is the Rock, and there is no other.
