from the devotional book, PICTURES OF GOD

Genesis 3:1-19 

If God commands all nature, why are there natural disasters? It seems logical that either God causes natural disasters, or He doesn’t control nature, right?

We can’t always say why God does this or that. His thoughts and ways are far beyond our own (Isaiah 55:8-9). We only know what He tells us:

1. The Lord is righteous in all His ways and kind in all His deeds. (Psalm 145:17, NASB) 

2. In His sovereignty, God has chosen to give us the privilege and responsibility of making meaningful decisions, within certain broad limits. We decide our actions, then He allows us to experience the results of those decisions.

3. God appointed us stewards of this world, and sometimes natural disasters are caused by our own greed, neglect, or mismanagement.

4. In a general sense, all natural disasters are apparently the result of our original decision to disobey God and go our own way. When we corrupted ourselves, we also corrupted the natural world over which God placed us as rulers.

The anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility…in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now. (Romans 8:19-22, NASB)

But even though God allows us to suffer the results of our decisions, He is still sovereign, and love is still His pledge. A few verses later in the same chapter Paul assures us:

We know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. (Romans 8:28, NASB)

God’s purposes for His people extend far beyond this world. We can never understand God and His ways if we focus only on this present world and think of physical death as the ultimate end. God’s love and purposes do not stop when this body dies.