On Grieving and the Sovereignty of God Part 2

In part 1 of this entry, I concluded that God's work in me through this time of grief is part of His sanctifying work in my life. I want to continue this discussion and take it from personal for me to applicable for others. Specifically, it must be understood that God can and should be trusted during the hardest of times solely because of who He is: good, loving, compassionate, gracious, merciful, just, holy, righteous, and sovereign. The emphasis here is on God's goodness and sovereignty in the midst of seemingly 'bad' and 'confusing' situations.

Dear reader, God does not lose control of situations, yours or mine. He is not caught off guard. Too often those who profess to know and love God struggle with this fact. If He is sovereign, by definition He is not waiting on us to do something before He has a plan. He has a plan. Let me emphasize: He has a plan. Not many plans. Not items at a buffet from which we pick and choose, and then He says, "Oh ok, I see you've selected that. I guess now I have to..." This thinking is a few short steps to full-on Open Theism - there is a God, but He's effectively as dependent on us as we are on Him.
When faced with grief or suffering or hard circumstances, we begin to ask a lot of questions. We wonder what has happened or why or who did what to deserve this (see John 9). I think of Job. After going through tremendous suffering and persecution, he attempts to answer some of his friends with his own justifications and rationalizations of why his life has turned out the way it did (ch.29-31). The problem is, in reality, Job did not know what he was talking about, and God let him know this in no uncertain terms (ch.38-41).
God's goodness in the midst of His sovereignty demands that we see Him differently, that we focus more on His character than on our immediate situation. In A Grief Observed, C.S. Lewis writes the following (p.69):


When I lay these questions before God I get no answer. But a rather special sort of 'No Answer.' It is not the locked door. It is more like a silent, certainly not uncompassionate, gaze. As though He shook His head not in refusal but waiving the question. Like, 'Peace, child; you don't understand.'
Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable. How many hours are there in a mile? Is yellow square or round? Probably half the questions we ask - half our great theological and metaphysical problems - are like that.


Rather than questioning God's intentions, petition Him to reveal His character in the situation. "Lord, help me see your goodness in this." "Father, show me Your love through my trials." "Holy Spirit, be my Comforter." This honors Him and benefits you as you 'meet trials of various kinds.' Then, request that He use what you have learned about Him to encourage not only yourself but also the people with whom you interact. You will be blessed, others will likewise be blessed (thus doubling your own blessing), and God the Father in Christ through the Holy Spirit will receive all the glory.