Providence

[AI translation] Without any further introduction, let me say at the outset that I would like to talk about providence on the basis of the verses that have been read. Providence! This is what most people know about the things of God at all, what most people who think about God require of God, what most people's faith, however stumbling, weak, uncertain, gets to at all. What most prayers ask for. Yes, providence. And that is indeed no small thing. If I didn't know that the world and my life in it were under the protection of a providential love, life would be scary indeed. It would indeed be a great misfortune to live. But lo, Jesus says it, the whole of Scripture speaks again and again of this world not being abandoned, of there being one who cares for it. This globe is not like a giant ball thrown into outer space, falling from somewhere to somewhere, or from nowhere to nowhere. No! This muddy, sometimes dirty, nasty, troubled globe, with this strange life on it, belongs to someone. He has a father who loves him, who thinks of him, who cares for him, who knows exactly what he needs.About ten days ago, I was in Baranya, in the small congregation whose pastor had preached here a few weeks ago, and took the second bushel money, 1700 Ft, to renovate his church. I preached in that church for three nights. When we came out of the service on the first evening, one of the presbyters stood before me and with tears in his eyes thanked me that the large congregation in the capital had extended a helping hand to the small congregation in Baranya, and said, among other things, verbatim: "Tell the members of the Pasarét congregation at home, Your Eminence, that they do not know what a great joy they have given us! They don't know how much good they have done us. No one has ever cared for us before, and now we feel that we are not alone, that they are thinking of us, that they love us! Here is the message, and let me use it as an illustration: they care, they think. Even if it is a man whose caring love we feel, how good! Even if it is God who cares for us, thinks of us and loves us. What a great privilege to know that our Father rules this world, and that He is a good, perfect, just, merciful, forgiving, punishing God!
"Cast all your care upon him, for he careth for you." (1Pt 5,7) And for you, even the hairs of your head are all accounted to Him, not one of them can fall from it without His knowledge and will. "(Mt 6,8) Well, yes, that is providence! This is the traditional idea of God's work, what we call providence. And it's all very well and good, or would be well and good, if it were so providential. But if we look around us in this world, in our own lives and in the lives of others, that divine providence often becomes quite problematic: the facts, or at least what we see, are often very much at odds with what we know and think about providence.
Here is the case of Job. We know how the fate of this righteous man turned out: as we would least have expected. Let us say, as he least deserved by our human standards. He lost his fortune, his children, all of them, by a stroke of misfortune, and then his health, and even the spiritual support of his wife. As if he were one of the very tragic victims of the Second World War! But he was a good man. God-fearing. A praying man. Somehow we would have given him a better fate than God. Especially when we see someone who is sometimes a mean, empty, evil man and yet manages to do everything in life. His healthy, family life is never a problem, he is doing great, he is lucky in everything. Where is the providence here?
Yes, that is one of the big problems: there is so much suffering, so much injustice, so much chaos in this world that it is often hard to detect any trace of divine providence in events. And indeed, when we look at the events and destinies that take place in this world, whether on a large or small scale, sometimes there is no sign at all of a rational and just power at work. In fact, the opposite seems to be the case. It is as if all history is a game of blind chance, a chaos without reason or purpose. For it is also true that sometimes it seems as if a certain moral order prevails, as if it were indeed the case that both good and evil are rewarded and punished, but it is also true that sometimes it seems as if the opposite were true: as if evil were rewarded and good punished. How many instances have we seen in war where the house of God has been hit with a bumper crop, and at the same time a dive, where many have been morally and healthily ruined, has remained intact. We know of cases where someone, a respected, morally respectable man, whose two sons died in the war, whose house collapsed during the siege, and at the same time another person, who had swindled his entire fortune from his vile business during the first war, escaped unscathed, both family and property-wise! Where is providence here? Does your heavenly Father know so well, one might ask mockingly, what you need?
The providence of which the Bible speaks very much is not a moral world order, it is not a mathematical world mechanism that balances everything. There is no such thing. It is not a moral mechanism behind events, but a personal God: your heavenly Father. And this God has not revealed himself in the Bible as the guarantor of a moral world order, nor as the one who rewards good and punishes evil. The Gospel speaks of something else: unmerited favour. The cross of Jesus, and what it means, is diametrically opposed to any notion of goodness and merit that we might think. The Bible does not teach that God rewards the good and punishes the bad. In fact, every believer is always amazed at the opposite. That God rewards him, the evil one, with eternal life, and punishes the good one, Jesus Christ, with damnation. This is the gospel of the Bible. The gospel. The Bible, in its great realism, does indeed acknowledge that there are many evils, miseries and injustices on this earth, and even places at the centre of earthly events the greatest misery and injustice imaginable: the event of the cross of Calvary, and it is in this that it reveals the fullness of God's goodness. In other words, God's response to the miseries and sufferings of the world is not to raise a magic wand from heaven and make everything even, right, put in order, nor is it a theory that explains everything, but an act, a fact, an action of love, by which it takes our misery, by which it stands by us in our trouble, by which it restores our communion with it, our relationship with it, and by which it takes away our greatest trouble. Let us understand this well, then: providence cannot be known from anywhere else but from the cross and resurrection of Jesus. That there is providence in this world at all cannot be demonstrated, cannot be shown from the course of life, from the course of human destiny, or at least cannot always be clearly seen. We do not see providence, but we believe providence, and we believe it because we believe in the death and resurrection of Jesus, and because we have seen into the heart of God through the death and resurrection of Jesus. We have come to know His love. Therefore, yes: we believe that our heavenly Father knows exactly what we need!
But there is another problem here: for it is as if God the Father is not only in control of things on earth, but as if there are other forces at work alongside Him. Who dictates what happens? Who is behind the events? Is it blind chance, or physical, psychic laws, or man, or satanic power, or God? Here is the example of Job. How did he come to such great misery? It could be said that natural forces caused his children to die in a storm, that he himself was ravaged by disease. But at the same time, certain people were responsible for his misery: the Sabeans drove away his animals, his wife tormented him spiritually. But it is also clear from the account that the satanic power was also heavily involved, wanting to bring down this child of God at all costs. And yet, in spite of all this, above all else, God holds the reins of all the episodes. Now how the various motives are woven together into Job's fate is something we will never be able to analyse logically. But that it is God who controls, rules and conquers in all of this, again, only becomes clear to us in Jesus. Behold, even at the cross of Jesus it can be said that, lo, nature triumphs. It is through physical exhaustion that Jesus dies. But at the same time we can also say that, lo, man has triumphed, for it was the chief priests, the Pharisees, Pilate, the Roman soldiers who had him crucified and killed. But it can also be said that the evil power has triumphed: it has finally succeeded in bringing about Jesus' death. And yet it is clear that God reigns, because here His saving will is being done, redemption is being accomplished, the kingdom of God is triumphant.
Here we are again, that only at the cross of Jesus can we truly believe in providence. Yes, we can believe in the providential power of God because we believe in the death and resurrection of Jesus, and through him in the love and power of God. If there, at Calvary, God's love triumphed over all other natural powers, human and Satanic evil, then in all other situations of life we can count on that love. And it is the only love that can be surely counted on. It is not, then, a question of understanding the mysteries of divine providence, but of trusting in the God who cares. For it is not in a formula, in an illuminating explanation, that the manifold problems of providence are solved, but in complete trust, in the faith that our heavenly Father knows well what we need. And this faith is very often believing in spite of what it sees. It believes not because... - but in spite of... In spite of the fact that there is no discernible plan, no guiding hand in the unfolding of events, it lives in the spirit of that plan and under the protection of that hand, because it has come to know God as Father in Jesus.
Yes, this world and our destiny in it are in the Father's hands. And we can only approach this hand as children. There is an old story that once upon a time, panic broke out on a ship that was caught in a great storm. The people ran in terror, wailing and wailing. Only a little girl continued to play in angelic calm in the dining room. Someone asked her in amazement: are you not afraid? The little girl looked at the questioner: why should I be afraid, my father is the helmsman! That's what it's about! Why should I be afraid, my father is the helmsman! It is in this filial attitude towards the Father, even on the scary, dark roads, it is in this filial attitude, and only in this attitude, that all the problems of Providence are solved for us!
Therefore:
I entrust myself to God,
I cannot trust in myself;
He formed me, and knows my work,
My soul I encourage with this.
The beautiful form of this world
The work of His hand.
What am I afraid of?", I say boldly:
'He will be my God and my Father.
(Canto 269, verse 1)
Amen
Date: 12 November 1961.