DAY 6 ~ STRANDED ~ Devotional ~ Don and Stephanie Prichard

 Day Six~ If you've not seen Days 1~5, be sure to go back and see those before reading this one ~

STRANDED

by

Don and Stephanie Prichard

Why does God allow bad things to happen to good people? Why does He allow evil in the first place?

In the overarching theme of God’s sovereignty in Stranded, those are the questions that eat away at Jake’s and Eve’s hearts. The questions gnaw at our hearts too. Few of us have escaped personal trauma in our lives, and some of us have been whopped up the side of the head by them.  

Yet the Bible tells us that affliction and God’s goodness go hand in hand.

Wait—don’t I mean sometimes? Sometimes affliction and God’s goodness go hand in hand?

No.

The Bible says always. Always is the big picture of God’s sovereignty. The beyond-the-sky, looking-down-from-the-heavens picture. The one that’s hard for us to handle and that generates the two questions at the opening of this devotional.

That’s because what we tend to grasp is the smaller picture. The down-on-earth, below-the-clouds picture—yep, the sometimes picture.

Sometimes, because our eyes look at circumstances and those circumstances hurt. The tsunami that wipes out hundreds of thousands of people. The war that kills thousands of soldiers. The thief who steals our credit card. The spouse who commits adultery. Rejection, exclusion, hate.

A fallen creation and a fallen creature. Those are our circumstances. And we are right to cry—and cry out—because of the pain they bring. But not to cry out at God. Not to blame Him. Not to question Him.

Why? Because God is not a fallen Creator. He is sovereign and He is good. He is in control—even over evil. And He is accomplishing good—even during evil. Those two great truths give us the always picture.

When we can’t lay ahold of the always because the circumstances and the pain are too close to see God’s goodness, we can still cry out to God and receive His comfort. We can still lift our eyes to the heavens and receive His healing grace. We can still trust that He loves us and find He is working on our behalf. 

In the end, we are the benefactors of God’s good sovereignty. Evil and its pain will be used by God to make us wiser, kinder, better able to love our neighbor and our Savior. We can say with the psalmist, “It was good for me to be afflicted.” Psalm 119:71

But those who reject Him and fault Him? They are left with only their pain.

A Marine Corps reservist sets sail on an anniversary cruise with his wife but ends up shipwrecked and bereaved on an uninhabited jungle island where he must protect the lives of three other survivors, unaware that one of them is responsible for his wife’s death.

CHECK DAY ONE'S POST to find out how to win this e-book or get an exchange for another on Amazon. . .DRAWING TO BE HELD Monday November 17th.

SEE BELOW DIVIDER ~ POST A COMMENT TO BE ENTERED . . .

TOMORROW ~ DAY SEVEN ~  STRANDED ~ Interviews with Author Helpers 
~DRAWING DAY ~
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