God is in Control

A very solid and comforting truth to be sure isn't it??? To believe God is in control??? At first blush,any believer would echo these words as being foundational to life. If you look deeper though, are there variables at play underlying this statement??? God is in control - of what??? Is he in control of circumstnaces,people,choices,nature??? Just how does He control??? Does He place limits on His control???

Calvinist theology,in its most extreme form, would take God & His control to the nth degree. I find difficulty with this, such as, did God control the serial killer in killing his victims & then himself??? Did God control the people who died from various pandemics across history??? See the problem here when you determine God is in control of everything??? It seems He had to make provision for freewill in some capacity or else freedom & responsibility, as well as love,grace,forgiveness & repentance have no real meaning. How can love exist if all we are doing is exactly what God determined in advance He would make us do,no matter what???

There is always a tension between theology & experience. I think they are 2 sides of a coin & need each other to make a whole. Theology can become stale & stodgy and kept away from daily living, and experience can become focused on everyones existential longings and private understandings that contact is lost with the rich history of what has taken place across the spectrum of life. I hope I am making sense here.

My struggle with fear can be linked back to this question. If God is in control, why have any fear??? Several reasons come to mind. The disparity between His nature & my own. The mystery inherently present in faith. His Word covers the entire course of human existence from even before we were created. He is sole Supreme Being and has all power to act as He chooses. He declares Himself to be Love. He has shown He is love by His actions, most notably His giving of Jesus. He can take and give life as He wills, because He is the Author of life. Many things happen though which let the reality of mystery and inability to comprehend Him fully as being our common experience. The examples i listed early on are ones which point to an inability to grasp the why and how of His control.

Knowing God is in control is hopefully a wonderful truth to gain peace & comfort from, but not one to take for granted or to let be a way we disengage from living out the call to be servants & doers of love & good deeds as He gives us life. I hope to seek to be more proactive in carrying out acts of loving service simply because He is in control!!!!