Oak Hill Church of Christ 6-5-22 Message: "Tragedies"

Oak Hill Church of Christ preaching minister, Randy Sterling, delivers a message on the difficulty of reconciling a troublesome world with a God who declares Himself Good.

Jesus declared that only the Father is Good, and God declares that not only is He Good but that he is also all knowing, and all powerful. Regular people find these ideas incongruent when attached to the tragedies they see unfold in daily life.

Losing a child or a parent, a crippling accident, an unexpected illness, a divorce, a job loss, there are so many things that can 'go wrong' in life in which an all-seeing, all-loving, all-powerful, all-good God appears to prove Himself to be misrepresenting at least one of those aspects of Himself.

"If God was so good then how come...?" Is a question many people have asked. Including those in the Bible. The great famine that plagued Egypt during Joseph's time seems like something that a Good God would have done something to prevent.

God, however, shows Himself to be making plans that we cannot always understand or comprehend. When a believer is feeling his or her relationship with God strained by tragedy, it is important to note that, like Jesus, we are called to undergo struggle and strife, the reasoning behind which we are not always given explanation while it plagues us.

Like Job, we may discover that in the worst of tragedies, the most important thing we can do is to remain steadfast in our devotion to God and trust that He will reveal the Goodness of His plans in the end. God asks of us faith, hope, and love. In tragedies, those may be the most important elements of our journey forward through the shadow of the valley and into the Light.