Where Was God When My House Burned Down?

Where Was God When My House Burned Down?

A few days ago in my community we had the most destructive fire in Colorado history. A thousand homes burned, many businesses were destroyed, and lives were sent spiraling into a turmoil that seems to have no end. Why does God let this happen?

God permits terrible things to happen. Things He could prevent. Why? The question is as old as mankind. Job is the oldest book in the Bible and it devotes its 42 chapters to this question. Job experiences total catastrophe. His property is destroyed and his children killed. Then he loses his health. And like anyone, he wants to know why. 

I feel inadequate. Many of you have suffered terribly. You have lost homes, health, even loved ones, and I feel like I have no right to say anything but I want to respond anyway. The Bible teaches us to keep at least these three things in mind at a time like this:

First, God has a purpose for everything that happens. Nothing is a meaningless accident. In Matthew 10 Jesus says not a single bird flies or lands without the Father knowing it and caring about it. Then Jesus says the Father has every hair on our head numbered. His point being that God knows us intimately and loves us deeply. In Ephesians 1 the Apostle Paul says everything in the universe is worked out according to the will of God. 

So God has a purpose for everything but we often don’t know the purposes of God. In time we may know in part but, we never know fully. Job finally gets to the point where he simply submits to God and says, “Though He slay me yet will I trust him.” After Abraham had lobbied on behalf of Sodom and Gomorrah but failed he simply conceded: “Surely the judge of all the earth will do right.” God at this very moment is bringing you to the point of surrender and trust in Him.

Third and finally, God uses these tragedies for great good, so great it is beyond our capacity to imagine how great the good is that God brings from these events.

The worst catastrophe in American history was the Civil War. One out of every 15 men in America was killed or wounded in the war. At the beginning of the conflict the South was convinced of the righteousness of her cause. God is on our side. Losing the war created a theological crisis. Then a strange thing happened. A great revival came to the South. It had not been the Bible belt before the war but hundreds of thousands of southerners turned to Christ in the 1870s and 1880s. The South to this day is more Christian than any region in America and has a decisive impact on our culture and politics. God used an unspeakable tragedy to bring about amazing blessing.

Many consider WWII the worst catastrophe of all time. 60 million killed. Horrors and atrocities which cannot even be imagined. Then the post-war world produced the most astonishing statistic I have ever seen. In 1950, immediately after the war, two thirds of the world’s Christians lived in what we call the First world, or the developed world, the West. One third lived in what we call the underdeveloped world. In the 50 years following World War 2 those numbers were reversed. The underdeveloped world had two-thirds of the world’s Christians. The first world one third. Spectacular growth in the Christian church produced the change. After WWII thousands of missionaries from Christian countries fanned out over the globe proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ and performing works of mercy of every kind. It produced the greatest shift in religious allegiance ever seen. God took history’s greatest tragedy and produced great good.

Of course, God had done this before. The cruelest injustice in the history of the human race was the death of the Son of God on the cross. And from it God brought about the greatest blessing—the salvation of the world.

I grieve for those who have lost so much in my own community and so many all over the world. But if as we suffer we seek God with our whole heart, He will take those tragedies and produce astonishing blessing.

As I was watching the coverage of the fires on television, they read a tweet from a man in a Bible study I lead. He said, my family and I have lost every earthly possession. I immediately texted him and told him how my heart was broken for him. He texted me back and said, We know that God is good all the time. He will bring us through this.

Yes He will. Thank you for listening. May God bless you this day in a mighty way.