This week a father and church pastor was tragically killed at a large Christian festival. (Image: Pastor Robert Guanco, 1985–2026, GoFundMe)
By nature, we can’t help but ask “Why?” But Jesus explicitly refuses to let us read God’s judgment of a person from the tragedies that happen to them:
Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? (Luke 13:4)
What God does tell you for sure is this: You must never read his heart toward you from the terrible things that happen to you. His heart toward you is revealed somewhere else.
Our lives are full of difficulty and suffering. God didn’t author the evil we experience. But he does rule over it, and nothing happens outside of his control. But even as his providence allows terrible things to happen, which seem so nonsensical to us, his heart toward you is always positive:
He does not afflict from his heart or grieve the children of men. (Lamentations 3:33)
There is no rational explanation for why tragedies like this happen.
There is no clever formula to work out what God’s doing.
There is simply no way to work out how justice is being done if you think hard enough about the injustices of the world.
This world, very simply, is often deeply unjust. Because we live in a time when God is hidden from our sight:
Truly, you are a God who hides himself, O God of Israel, the Saviour. (Isaiah 45:15)
That does not mean that the injustices you suffer now are pointless. Nor does it mean they have no value. But the particular reason why this or that happens is not given to us to know in this life. That is by no means easy. The not-knowing alone can be a harrowing source of sorrow.
As you look around at this world you will see that it is crumbling. But it will not exist in death and decay forever. One day the judge of the whole world will return. He will execute justice. And he will renew all things.
It isn’t revealed to us how he will finally put right every particular wrong and injustice we experience now. But what is revealed to us now is this: that the one making those decisions is good. And he is good to you.
That judge of all the earth is Jesus Christ. And his heart is revealed, not in the death and destruction we see and experience in our lives, but in the death and destruction he himself submitted to by giving his life for you. Jesus loves you. And you know that because he died for you.
This Jesus is the man God has appointed to judge the world.
No doubt structural engineers are working right now to explain why and how that sign fell on that poor man. And maybe the mechanics of what happened will be understood in time. But no rational explanation will ever feel like it truly “explains” a tragedy like this.
The assurance that God is good to us even as life is bad can only be received as a gift, a supernatural gift, that God’s Spirit gives to us through hearing the Gospel.
That’s why God put the church here. So that you can hear the Gospel and receive that assurance that God is good to you, no matter how bad and evil your life and experiences have become.
If you want to hear that Gospel and you live in Manchester, come along to Manchester Lutheran Church any Sunday at 11am; or from anywhere else join the Online Lutheran Church at 6pm Wednesday UK time.