Triumph, Disaster, and the Providence of God: All Things from His Fatherly Hand

In times of prosperity, when life is going well and everything seems to fall perfectly into place, it is easy to think of God as a good, faithful Father who cares for His children. It is significantly more difficult to look trials, sorrow, and grief in the eye and emphatically declare how great the faithfulness of God is and how generous and gracious His gifts are. We must learn how to do both of these things with equal fervor, but it is impossible to rejoice both in happiness and tribulation without understanding the providence of God. When we begin to understand Providence, we begin to understand that God is just as faithful in times of sorrow as He is in times of prosperity.

Triumph and Disaster: Two Sides of the Same Coin

My seventh grade English teacher had us memorize the poem “If” by Rudyard Kipling, some ten years ago. The speaker in this poem is a father, telling his son, “If you heed my advice, then ‘Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, / And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!’”¹

One of the lines my teacher highlighted was this one: “If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster, / And treat these two impostors just the same.”² There is truth to this, to not being tossed to and fro by the ups and downs of life, for if one can take both success and failure, good times and bad times, in stride, life becomes more bearable. Ultimately, however, one can never truly treat Triumph and Disaster the same without knowing the One who sends them.

The Providence of God

Fruitful years are easy to rejoice in, and we should rejoice in them and give thanks to God when He sends them to us. Every good and perfect gift comes from the Father, and of course, that includes seasons of plenty, when we are on top of the mountain, as it were (James 1:17).

Indeed, it is easy to find joy in times of prosperity, but what shall our response be when we are beset by the sorrows of this life, the things that characterize this fallen world: sickness, death, poverty, grief, persecution? This life is a vale of tears; where can we find comfort?

We can find it in the providence of God.

Providence, according to Question 27 of the Heidelberg Catechism, is this:

Q. What do you understand by the providence of God?
A. The almighty, everywhere-present power of God, whereby, as it were by His hand, He still upholds heaven and earth with all creatures, and so governs them that herbs and grass, rain and drought, fruitful and barren years, meat and drink, health and sickness, riches and poverty—indeed, all things come not by chance, but by His fatherly hand.³

By His providence, our God upholds all things, and in His omnipotence, rules all creation in such a way that the things that befall us are never coincidence, but come to us as from the hand of a father to his son.

The catechism’s description of these things coming to us by His fatherly hand is important to note. All things are not said to be sent to us from His judgmental hand, His angry hand, or His flippant hand—but from His fatherly hand. If our earthly fathers know how to keep us from going hungry, how much more our perfect, almighty Father in heaven, who knows what we need before we even ask? (Matthew 7:11)

Hard Providences

Certainly, the things that God sends us do not always make us feel like He is providing for us, or that He is giving us what we need. Sometimes our arms are empty; our hearts, broken, and our wounds, festering. Sometimes we doubt whether God cares for us at all. Yet, God is our Father, and if the sparrow cannot fall without His will, how much more are our empty hands and broken hearts known to Him? How much more will He provide for us when we need it? His providence includes those painful things, too.

My pastor often calls those trials and difficulties, when our reality is bleak and hard to swallow, hard providences. Hard providences are, as the name suggests, hard; they are difficult, and they stretch our hearts and minds beyond what we think they can bear. But even those things are not outside the umbrella of God’s providence—nothing is. Though providence may include suffering, it also includes the strength to endure, for our Father has given us His Holy Spirit.

Everything, as Romans 8:28 tells us, works together for the good of those who love God and are called according to His purpose. Therefore, when tragedy and sorrow are our lot, the Christian may know that all things are working together for good, having been sent by the hand of our Heavenly Father (Romans 8:28).

Great Is His Faithfulness

That pair of often-quoted verses from Lamentations, “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness,” are so much better understood in the context of the entire chapter and book (Lamentations 3:22–23). It is much easier to say to the Lord, “great is Your faithfulness,” when things are good than it is to say the very same when one’s “endurance has perished” (Lamentations 3:18).

It is much harder to meditate on the perfection of God’s faithfulness when one’s soul is “bowed down” and “bereft of peace” (Lamentations 3:17, 20). These are the very situations for which those famous verses were written. In the midst of sorrow so great that we “have forgotten what happiness is,” great is His faithfulness! (Lamentations 3:17)

The circumstances leading to our sorrow—indeed, even the sorrow itself—come from His fatherly hand, for our good, so that we might be made into the image of Christ. Though it be a heavy burden, though we strain and fight to see how the hardships of this life are a picture of God’s faithfulness to us, we can remember that His steadfast love toward us never ceases, and He does not “afflict from His heart” (Lamentations 3:33). His heart is gentle and lowly, His yoke easy and His burden light (Matthew 11:29–30).

An Easy Yoke for Burdened Souls

Though the burdens we bear may not seem easy and light, in Christ, they are, for He has already borne our sorrows and griefs, and He sympathizes with our every weakness (Isaiah 53:4; Hebrews 4:15). He bears them with us.

Dane Ortlund, in his book Gentle and Lowly, highlights that Christ’s sympathy for our weaknesses can be described as co-suffering.⁴ The sixteenth-century theologian John Owen writes that Christ is moved during our suffering with a “fellow-feeling of them.”⁵

We do not suffer alone, and we do not suffer needlessly. Our sufferings may feel heavy and suffocating, but having come from the fatherly hand of God, they are producing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond what our greatest imagination may conjure; therefore, we do not suffer in vain (2 Corinthians 4:17). We have Christ as a co-sufferer; therefore, we do not suffer alone.

Joy in the Face of Anguish

Only the Christian can really face Triumph and Disaster in the same way, knowing that both come from the hand of our Heavenly Father. While the father in Rudyard Kipling’s poem promises his son the world and manhood for following his advice—which includes the suggestion to endure Triumph and Disaster equally—our Father promises us that our sufferings are preparing for us an eternal weight of glory, for His Son, Jesus Christ, has overcome the world and obtained for us an imperishable inheritance (1 Peter 1:3–4).

In light of this weight of glory, we can rejoice in suffering. We can rejoice always, as Paul urges in his letter to the Philippians (Philippians 4:4). Such rejoicing is not contrary to sickness, grief, and death—all the sufferings that mark this fallen world; rather, it is connected to them, for rejoicing is born from such griefs.⁶

Conclusion

Time and time again, the words of Heidelberg Catechism 27—“all things come not by chance, but by His fatherly hand”—come back to fortify my failing heart, for if God is a good and perfect Father—and He is—I can trust that all He sends me in His providence are from the hand of a loving Father to his precious child.

We can rejoice knowing that the providence of God is directing our lives, and that nothing comes to us by accident, only by His fatherly hand. Knowing this, we can, even in the midst of great anguish, cry with the author of Lamentations: “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases! Great is Your faithfulness!”

Footnotes