Miracle!
Years ago, my daughters miraculously survived a massive car wreck. While their babysitter was driving home on a local highway, something fell off the back of the truck in front of her. She couldn’t avoid it, and she hit this metal object at over 65 mph.
The results weren’t pretty. The SUV they were traveling in was crushed, flipping multiple times in what some eyewitnesses described as something you don’t even see in the movies. As emergency responders arrived at the scene, they braced themselves for the worst. They had seen this type of accident before. It wasn’t going to end well.
Except it did.
The amazing happened. Everyone survived with nothing but whiplash, a few scratches and one broken bone (the babysitter’s foot). It was a miracle.
Joy and Pain
The following 48 hours were a whirlwind. I don’t remember much, but I’ll never forget one chilling moment.
Because of the nature of the wreck and the survival of a 6 month old baby and 2 year old toddler, this was news. The wreck itself made news that night, and we were interviewed the next day to tell the story of survival to a couple local news stations.
Watching the news those nights, it was fun to see ourselves on television, and it was a relief to know our girls were alive. However, my chilling moment came immediately following our story. The next bit of news one of those nights was the story of a little boy accidentally drowning in his home bathtub.
It almost made me ill. Here I was rejoicing in the salvation of my children, while a father somewhere in Kansas City was at home grieving the sudden and unexpected loss of his baby.
The Truth about Me and God
That weekend, the story of David and Bathsheba was brought to mind. The story is more than just about sin and guilt. It’s about the balance between who God is and who man is.
Here’s the story in a nutshell. David sins with Bathsheba (commits adultery), Bathsheba ends up pregnant, and David attempts to cover it up with murder. God chooses to spare David’s life, but the child died. The child was innocent; David was guilty. It didn’t make sense.
My kids were innocent, yet another equally innocent child died. This didn’t, and it still doesn’t make sense. That moment and this story taught me something about both the nature of God and the nature of man.
God is sovereign, and I am not.
I don’t and can’t ever fully understand His ways. David didn’t understand God’s way. David cried and begged for the life of his child, but God was sovereign, and He didn’t respond. While David didn’t understand God, he accepted God’s decision.
David chose to bless God in spite of his lack of understanding.
Will you accept it?
Since the wreck, I’ve been on the opposite side of a miracle. Thankfully, I haven’t lost a child, but I have lost a business and position and finances and dreams and relationships.
It doesn’t ever seem to make a lot of sense.
In those moments, I have a choice. I can choose to accept God’s sovereignty (through my anger and tears) and bless Him, or I can deny He is God and curse Him.
Like David, you have this same choice.
I pray you choose to be like David. Accept God’s sovereignty and bless Him. He won’t always make sense.
Over the years my understanding of God’s sovereignty has matured. Here is something that most resembles where I am at:
“Perhaps the Great Composer is a way to see the Father as one who has a beautiful plan for the universe. I think that we see glimpses of that plan in the bible. And maybe in Christ we see the head and conductor of a great body of diverse musicians who each have a different role in the orchestra. Yet possibly we understand God best as the Holy Spirit who quickens an inanimate object and brings beautiful music from it?”
More at kcbob.com/2012/01/is-god-micro-manager.html