A question about tornadoes and God

Recently several tornadoes tore through my home town of Chattanooga. The result was incredible devastation and loss of life in Ringgold, Georgia, Apison, Tennessee and many other areas. I received an interesting but not surprising question on facebook about disaster. This question comes up so much, "if God is sovereign over all things why does he allow disaster and sickness and general bad stuff". I thought this might be good to ponder. The question will continue to haunt us as long as we live on this broken earth.

David,
I have a question and you were always good at answering these kinds of questions. So as you know we had some big tornadoes here last week and I was thinking, why is it that God protected my parents house and it is pretty much completely fine, but their neighbors' isn't? And some people close to where they lived died, but they were fine and even their horses escaped without even scratch? So how do we rejoice that He protected them while some others weren't protected? Just kind of confusing to me. I would appreciate any insight you might have.

Response...

Humm, great question. The first thing I would say is this, it's very mysterious isn't it? God does have the ability to control tornadoes and everything else. Jesus said to the storm "peace be still" and it was. We know that disaster hits people who love Jesus and people who don't. So it does't seem that followers of Jesus are immune. The second thing to remember is that the world is broken. When sin entered so did crazy disaster stuff. As long as this broken world is in existence there will be tornadoes, fires, hurricanes, earthquakes and the like. Anyway, I'm thankful there were just a few shingles off the top of your parent's house and sad about the people who lost their life. I think Piper's perspective on the tsunumi's might help a little...

Check it out...Tsunami, Sovereignty, Mercy

Please join me in praying for and showing mercy to all who are suffering. Whether in Japan, Haiti, or Apison, may we be people who feel and show great compassion to those who suffer.