God and the tsunami

“The creation is subjected to vanity,” writes Paul in Romans 8:20. One such vain, seemingly utterly senseless event was the seaquake on the second day of Christmas. By now, nearly 150,000 fatalities have been counted. No human being can make any real sense of it. Attempts to assign meaning to such bizarre occurrences are doomed from the outset to be ridiculed. The Reformatorisch Dagblad (Dutch newspaper) linked the disaster to God’s wrath. Wrongly so. According to Scripture, today only grace reigns, and “the day of God’s indignation” (Rom. 2:5) is future.
Anyway, Paul adds something to it:

“For to vanity was the creation subjected, not voluntarily, but because of Him Who subjects it…”

The entire creation is subjected to vanity. See the book of Ecclesiastes. NOT because the creature itself chose this (“not voluntarily”), as the average Christian assumes. No, the Creator Himself takes responsibility for it. Long before man ate of the forbidden fruit, we read of a world that was waste and empty (Genesis 1:2). Death and destruction were already doing their destructive work long before Genesis 3. The millions of fossils in the earth’s layers bear witness to this. God Himself has subjected the creation to vanity. Not arbitrarily, but with a purpose. That means that, from God’s perspective, nothing goes wrong.
And the creation too will be entirely restored:

“…yet in EXPECTATION, that the creation itself, also, shall be freed from the slavery of corruption…”

So we keep singing: He’s got the whole world in His hand…!

Delen: