God and sickness

At the end of the sixth day of creation, God pronounced everything he had made as being “very good” (Genesis 1:31). The entrance of sin into the world brought sickness and death and untold problems into life (Genesis 3). The Bible makes it clear that God is not responsible for the existence of sin and its effects (Psalm 5:4; James 1:13-15). God is the giver of every good and perfect gift (James 1:17).

When it comes to bad things in life, God can keep them out of Christians’ lives (Psalm 91:9-10) or he can allow them to enter our lives for good purposes (Romans 8:28). In the latter case, you and I sometimes might have difficulty understanding the good purposes that God has in mind. That is because God’s ways and thoughts are—thankfully—different from ours (Isaiah 55:8-9).

The confidence we can have at a time like this is that God is very much in control of his world (Psalm 46; 104; Colossians 1:17; Hebrews 1:3). While we know that God will use every circumstance in life for our eventual and eternal good, we also look forward to a life that is free from sin and its effects (Revelation 7:15-17; 21:4). Little wonder that the Church thinks of Jesus’ visible return on the Last Day and prays, “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus” (Revelation 22:20).