THE OVER-RULING OF GOD

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23969, 18 November 1939, Page 2

THE OVER-RULING OF GOD

Written for the Otago Daily Times By the Rev. Gardiner Miller.

I have a friend who finds it impossible to believe that God cares for the individual. He has travelled a gopd deal, and the impression his travels have left on his mind is that there are millions of men and women so low in the scale of life that he cannot imagine that a Father-God can possibly know each individual, far less care for each one. My own view is entirely opposite. I believe God knows everyone of us individually and I also belieye that for God to know is for God tc care. If that belief of mine were proved untrue, my whole religious outlook would become a “blackout.” It seems to me that the one great, triumphant note of the New Testament is that “ God cares for me ” —to quote the children's hymn. The salvation that Jesus brought to the human race is- an individual salvation. I cannot conceive that race salvation hag any real meaning at all. And yet we must face the tragic fact that uncounted lives, if not uncountable lives, seem, to all intents and purposes to go to waste. War ruthlessly slays, disease is no respecter of persons; poverty crushes and Nature destroys. Where, say the honest sceptics—-and there are honest sceptics—is the God Who knows and cares? And many good Christian people are upset about this matter. They cling desperately to their beliefs, but somehow 4 hey have a despairing feeling in their hearts that the world, and their own troubled lives, have slipped out of the hands of God. Instead of their beliefs steadying them, they have now to buttress their beliefs to keep them from crumbling altogether. Now. while I believe that God knows us every one and cares for us, I do not go about with a bandage over my eyes.

I see so much that speaks of injustice, I daily face the terrible ravages of disease, and I know something of the heart-ache and heartbreak of life. And in spite of all that I believe that God knows and God cares.

Being a reasonable person and having to face audiences several times every week and try to meet other needs with the messages God gives me, I am forced to arrive at some conclusion; on this matter of God and the individual life, or else put on the blinkers of pious dishonesty. Let me say, without any "beg pardon,” that I do not believe that God sends war or disease. War and disease are not the servants of God; they are His enemies. Neither do I believe that there is any virtue in poverty. There should be no poverty in a world which God has filled to overflowing with all the necessaries of life. I do not believe that it is the will of God that there should be broken-hearted men and women. And yet the world is full of sad and weeping eyes. You will see that I am stressing somewhat the dark and ugly and saying nothing about the bright and cheerful things in life, like the song of the birds, the laughter of children, the love of a man for a maid.

These lovely things are there always; we feel they ought to be there. But the other things are the things that throw us off our balance. And it is in regard to these that we cannot square the belief in a knowing and caring God. As for myself—and now at long last I come to the point towards which I have been voyaging ever since I set sail in my ship of thought, with my pen for a mast and my paper for a sail—l believe that there is, in and through, and in spite of, everything, an over-ruling purpose of God.

To say that is not an easy way out of a difficulty: it is a reasonable explanation for a problem. It is sheer nonsense to say that everything is the Will of God; it is sensible to say that everything will ultimately be so changed and charged that it will be included in the will of God. Let me direct your thoughts to an illustration of this. In the first book of the Bible there is the story of a man who—and if ever a man had the right to be vindictive, he had—found out the truth of the over-ruling purpose of God in his life. That man was Joseph, His brothers sold him; a woman slandered him, and a man’s forgetfulness kept him in prison two years longer. When his brothers were found out, he did not punish them for their crime. More than that, when these self-same brothers came, with craftiness, after their father’s death, to seek his forgiveness, he rose above resentment and forgave them. Read that fiftieth chapter of Genesis again and pause at verse 20 until it soaks into your heart. There, in that verse, you have the interpretation of life’s experiences that will steady you and give you undying hope for the future. Joseph simply said that, no matter what men had done to him, God was over-ruling everything and bringing to pass good for evil. At no time would Joseph have said that such and such a calamity was the will of God, but, looking back on all the calamities, he now sees that God was ever active in making calamities, in spite of themselves, serve a higher purpose. Somewhere I have read that calamities are the shade of His hand—and, looking back on my own life, I believe it to be true. We all must pay the penalties of stupidity and wrong-doing. But I am positive that the things that happen to us, outside our own doing, are not sent direct to hurt us, but that a gracious God, Who knows and cares, is silently taking them and moulding them and shaping them for purposes of blessing. No human being is forgotten by God, though most human beings only think of God occasionally. It will probably take most of us a long time to realise the over-ruling of God ih the strang ups-and-downs ox our lives, but one day the truth will flash upon us, and we shall see that our way, though winding and crooked and steep, has all the time been wending upwards to the gates that lead to the City of God, where, above all. there is complete understanding. Ella Wheeler Wilcox has a verse that helps: I know as my life grows older, And mine eyes have clearer sight,

That under each rank wrong, somewhere There lies the root of right; That each sorrow has a purpose, By the sorrowing oft unguessed, But as sure as the sun brings morning, Whatever is—is best. 1 cannot accept the last line. Ido not believe that “ whatever is—is best.” but if the gifted poetess meant that “ Whatever is—is moving towards the best,” under the hands of a God Who knows and cares, then I am one with her. It is wrong then to blame God for being ignorant deliberately, and careless, of the teeming millions on the earth. Their condition is practically man-made, But God is busy, in spite of man’s inhumanity, countering these conditions and ultimately changing them. . And the reason why the process is so slow is that so few of us are helping Him. God cares! Of course, He does. Co-operate with Him.