The waters rose 26 feet in 45 minutes. Seven inches per minute. Terrifying.
Thinking about frantic moms and dads searching desperately for their daughters after the tragedy at Camp Mystic is almost more than I can handle. As a shepherd, I’m supposed to have all the answers. But sometimes I have very few answers – only anguish.
Where was God? Where was God when the Guadalupe River raged and roared and ravaged everything in its path? Where was God?
We know that God can calm the storm. We know that God can part the seas. We know that God can command the oceans to keep their distance: “This far, but no farther.”
God could have ordered the river to stand down. He could’ve stopped the flood from swelling in the Texas Hill Country. A friend from near the camp told me that they’d been praying for rain. That’s one of the weird things about weather: the same systems which can bless and refresh can wreak havoc under the “right” conditions. God could’ve created meteorological systems which don’t permit such tragic aberrations to happen at all. But He didn’t. So, where was God?
As we try to make sense of the Texas flooding, is it easier to conclude that there is no God?
At first glance, it might help. Analyzed from a perspective of atheism or agnosticism, so-called “natural disasters” are just the way the world works. Excessive rainfall happens on occasion, and rivers rise to dangerous proportions. When that happens, where a person happens to be boils down to the luck of the draw. Some girls – and others among the unlucky – are simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.
It’s not very comforting, but it gets God off the hook. In the middle of the night, however, science has a strange way of not being enough. You and I’ve been wired to long, sooner or later, for more than science can explain. Our souls ask deep questions which crave honest answers. So the no-God notion doesn’t calm or satisfy us for long.
Today I’m challenging you to look at this from the polar opposite perspective. This disaster in Texas doesn’t point us away from God – but straight toward Him. As I write this, I’m forced to admit that even my labeling it a “disaster” is my making a moral judgment. Even when I merely imply that something is wrong in this world – that something should have turned out better than it did – it’s an admission that there’s a higher moral order emanating from somewhere.
What kind of universe best explains our emotional response to a tragedy like this? I’ll answer. It’s a universe that, from the beginning, was designed to be moral – because it was created by a good God. A very good God, in fact.
Right now, your grief and mine are whispering God’s name.
This side of heaven, we’ll have plenty of questions left unanswered. Why, despite our best efforts to make this world a better place, are we reminded regularly that our best intelligence – and our most sophisticated technology and safety measures – can fail so miserably?
Because this world is broken. There’s a spiritual brokenness, and there has been since Adam, caused by forces of evil that are as real as the air we’re inhaling right now. Spiritual brokenness morphs into brokenness in us, and in everyone and everything around us – including nature. Because of sin, there’s deep brokenness in God’s world. Everyone’s trapped in the brokenness, whether they recognize it or not – though we may experience it in different ways.
If God is real, what kind of God is able to bless a broken world? A God who not only tells us – by His Word – how to navigate the brokenness, but a God who stepped into the brokenness of human history Himself. Christ came, and He still comes. He comes alongside us in our suffering, and He empowers us to love our hurting neighbors as ourselves.
One day our God will bring complete comfort and restoration to all who trust and follow Him. If it’s true that Jesus rose from the dead, then natural disasters and the suffering they entail are never the end of the story. There’s eternal life beyond the grave! The Bible promises a time when God will make everything new. Literally, everything! The brokenness that we see today will be made right in ways so spectacular that they’ll far exceed anything we ever imagined.
This side of glory, we live in a gut-wrenching tension that stretches our heart and our faith.
Could God have prevented the flood?
Yes. Of course.
Did God have the power to reroute raging waters or dispatch mighty angels to save the day?
Beyond a shadow of a doubt.
Could God have rescued everyone?
You already know the answer. But He didn’t. Not in all the ways we hoped and prayed.
So this is where you and I crawl – sometimes kicking and screaming – into the sacred realm of secret things. Things known only to God. Now, as the Scriptures affirm, we see everything through a glass, darkly. Our vision can be cloudy and myopic. There are times – often tragic times – when divine sovereignty doesn’t line up with human expectation. When that happens to us, we mustn’t try to run away from God – as it’s the perfect time to run toward Him.
Sometimes, the brokenness of this world breaks even God’s heart. The Cross is Exhibit A. Jesus could have called heavenly hosts to halt His crucifixion. But He didn’t. Not because He couldn’t, but because there was a greater purpose in the making – a gorgeous redemptive plan temporarily eclipsed by His own suffering. Kerrville is our reminder.
We don’t know the full mind of God when it comes to everything, but we do know this: God’s slowness is never His apathy, and His silence is never His absence. Sometimes He calms the sea. Sometimes He withholds His miraculous deliverance so that a greater truth might emerge from the darkness which seems to envelope us – even through the ravages of our grief.
Here’s the good news. You and I serve a God who weeps with us, just as He wept with those who’d lost Lazarus. With nail scars of His own, Jesus steps into your sorrows and mine. We can’t answer every “why,” but we can know that He’s still righteous. When we can’t see His goodness in the circumstances He allows, we can seek it in communion with Him in His wide-open arms. He knows our every pain; He’s been there. As kids, we prayed, “God is great. God is good …” Friends, His justice isn’t always immediate, but it’s inevitable. And we look forward to the day when every tear will be wiped dry by His grace.
God’s still here. Even in the storm, He was at Camp Mystic: in the unfathomable chaos, in the desperate cries for help, and in the unexpected miracles. Because of the finished work of Christ, God is always for us. He’s “Emmanuel” – “God with us” – in the storm as much as the sunshine.
And God’s still squarely in control. “We know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose.” This unshakable promise doesn’t mean that all things are good; obviously, they’re not. But it means that God can use even the most horrific thing, like a flood that steals young lives, to plant beautiful seeds of glorious cosmic redemption.
It’s time for the ransomed bride of the Lord Jesus Christ to cry and to pray, to suffer with those who are suffering, and to declare through our tears the perfect goodness of God – even when the storm strikes.
I watched a video from inside one of the buses that transported some of the campers from Camp Mystic to safety. The girls were singing a song that I’ve sung many times …
“I wish for you my friend
This happiness that I’ve found
You can depend on Him
It matters not where you’re bound
I’ll shout it from the mountaintop – praise God!
I want my world to know
The Lord of love has come to me
I want to pass it on”
Pass it on.
Pastor Charles
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