Month: July 2026

Was It His or Her Time?

How should we understand disaster and how should we grieve when disaster impacts us? The author looks at the concept of death happening because of a spiritual cause or at an appointed time.

Recently, my brother-in-law witnessed an accident. A fourteen year old boy came flying down a street to a blind corner on an e-bike. He was from out-of-town and consequently didn’t know the street or apparently see the stop sign. He flew through the intersection and was hit by a car and thrown quite a distance. He didn’t make it. My brother-in-law was quite disturbed by what he saw. Understandably so. He later asked me, “Was it his time?”

The idea that there are appointed times does come from the Bible. There are appointed times for demons, Jesus’ return, the length of pestilence and other forms of punishment, day and night, gestation, and as Solomon and the Byrds said, “A time for every season under Heaven.” God knows the length of our days. There are plenty of instances where a person’s death is foretold, but is that the same as fore-ordained? I don’t think so.

It is hard to completely comprehend what it is like to be God and to transcend time. Our experience is completely within time. We experience things sequentially and cannot fathom not being within time.

To help understand my brother-laws question’s answer, let me ask some adjacent questions. Did God know that accident would happen? Yes. Did He cause that accident to happen? No. Why did it happen? The boy made a mistake. Could it have been avoided? Sure. Could God have stopped it? Yes. Why didn’t He? See below. God does cause some disasters to happen, but they are rare. Most disasters have no immediate spiritual causation. They are just the cause and effect of every factor involved.

The next biggest cause is apparently Satan. The Book of Job is a tough one to understand. Job and his friends think that God caused all things based on whether a person deserved it or not. The story of Job and later Jesus would refute that belief.

Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? I tell you no.

Luke 13:4-5a (ESV)

God didn’t cause Job’s suffering, Satan did. God didn’t even allow Job’s suffering unless you want to go way back and say that God allowed Satan his powers and his time. Satan punished Job to make a point that Job was not blameless. God only limited Job’s suffering. The tower in Siloam fell because of poor engineering or unsafe building practices, not the guilt of the workers or likely anything else.

We live in a world that is impacted by sin and the curse. “The curse”, a biblical term, seems to mean that God doesn’t tightly control what happens on Earth during this age. He hasn’t abandoned us. We would know it if He did. But the world does free wheel under cause-and-effect. The cause can be people’s sin or carelessness. The cause can be Satan influencing people or environment. The cause can be God’s intervention, but don’t expect God to prevent every evil or even many of them. In general, we are to feel the effects of the curse. It is what Adam and Eve got started.

When we grieve, we want to find something to blame or to change after-the-fact. God tends to get a lot of blame, usually for inaction. This reveals false assumptions about life. We think that this life should be fair, like Job and his friends. It is not. We think that this life is all there is or that it is the main thing for us. It is not. We think disaster can only happen to other people. It can happen to anyone, including us.

If we don’t blame God, we blame ourselves. That is not usually justified either. Yes, we could have taken another course of action and that would have changed cause-and-effect, but we cannot foresee many things like this. The pain of our grief needs to go somewhere else.

It is far better to ponder such questions when we are not clouded by pain and raw emotion. Job, a man of great faith, didn’t do so; and eventually blamed God for being unfair. God balled him out. Job retracted his accusations. He didn’t understand the scope of the events that led to his suffering. As tough as it was, he should have continued to trust God. I doubt that I could have done better, even with knowing the end of the story.

Knowing the “end” of this chapter of our story and of that of our loved ones can be a source of incredible strength. Losses like a tragic death are devastating. The boy’s death was upsetting to my brother-in-law, a mere bystander. It was far worse for the father, whom my brother-in-law saw fall to his knees. I sure they devastated the driver, who was keeping the law. We must grieve, but do not let such things destroy you. There is no point in that: it can have generation over generation negative effects, and it can imperil your salvation. If your understanding about life-after-death is strong and based on the tangible, reviewable evidence of God’s promise and action in Jesus, you will do much better. This isn’t a mind trick or wishful thinking. This is having right expectations about this life and the life to come.

Fear God

God has been my friend and my mentor since childhood. God has never done me wrong. Even in His seeming inaction, I have found hindsight eventually as to why He didn’t act. With that said, it is hard for me to have fear of God in the classic way we understand fear.

As part of a summer Bible reading program that I am doing in my congregation, we have recently read Luke 12 which has provided the topic for today:

4 “I tell you, my friends, do not fear those who kill the body, and after that have nothing more that they can do. 5 But I will warn you whom to fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him!

Luke 12 :4-5 (ESV)

Because I know what Jesus did and why, and have a firm belief in the promise of God and God’s character, I don’t think of my future as potentially including Hell (here the word is Gehenna, a reference to post-Judgment Day punishment), but it would be wise to do so at least in theory. People fall away from grace. It happens. They can mangle the Gospel until it is ineffective (see Galatians), fail to forgive when required, wilt under difficulty or choke out because the temptations of the world. I don’t think about that happening to me. I don’t ponder it. But I need to respect that God sticks to the letter of His Law even when it costs Him. I don’t want my connection to Christ to become compromised. I have only Christ’s righteousness as my hope.

The context in which Jesus speaks these words is one of the original disciples potentially being afraid of what Jewish leaders might do to them. It is scary to confess Christ in an environment where that is not going to be accepted. Worse, if it will probably be persecuted. I don’t live in a family or society where being a Christian is actively persecuted, but I would like to think that, if I did, I would be brave enough and certain enough to not be afraid to confess Christ. My confession would be based on a love of God, not a fear of God. But fear of God wouldn’t be without reason.

8 “And I tell you, everyone who acknowledges me before men, the Son of Man also will acknowledge before the angels of God, 9 but the one who denies me before men will be denied before the angels of God.

Luke 12:8-9 (ESV)

Here is a picture of Judgment Day that I don’t often ponder. People are separated to Jesus’ right and to His left. Some of those put on the left feel like they should be on the right. Before the angels of God, they are denied by Jesus. “I don’t know you”, is how it is expressed in a different passage. “I don’t believe/know Jesus”, is what got them there.

Denying Jesus is exactly what Peter did three times. Peter dared to hope for forgiveness, and he found it. Jesus gave Peter the chance to confess him three times a bit later. It was a chance to do things in reverse. There is forgiveness for being cowardly. It is tougher when the denial is adopting a different worldview that excludes Jesus as your Savior. Usually, people in that situation don’t seek forgiveness, but even in that situation, there can be hope.

All of these brushes with a Judgment Day disaster can be avoided with a healthy, non-surreal, fear of God. How can one get to that point? I think a great place to start is to ponder these words of Jesus and visualize being brave before you actually have to be brave. If you know that you are in a dangerous situation, ask God for bravery. Peter just thought he had it. There is also a difference between genuinely denying Christ and being clever enough to serve another day. God is not looking for people to invite martyrdom. Take comfort in these words if you are potentially in such a situation:

the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say.”

Luke 12:12 (ESV)

We are saved by God’s grace in the end, and not by being brave. Being brave may be pivotal in remaining with Christ. A healthy fear of God and the power of the Holy Spirit can provide these things.