Here's an email question, Pastor John, in moments of public tragedy, how do you reconcile

your own compassion for those who suffer and also hold firmly to God's sovereignty, knowing

that what has happened was ultimately governed by God.

It seems this is a huge tension, theologically, when the suffering happens.

Just personally speaking, how far do you affirm in your own heart the determining will of

God when you see the tragedy unfold in the news?

My understanding of the question now is not so much what I'm saying in public, but what

I'm feeling in my heart and how I'm relating compassion to a conviction.

So here's my thought.

I think the question, the way it's put, if I understand it, is based on some assumptions

that I may not share.

Let me try to state those and then the person who asked the question can see if we're

on the same page.

It sounds to me like one of the assumptions is that if one feels and speaks in his own

heart about a building collapsing in Bangladesh with several hundred people crushed, or even

as I'm talking today, a mental health facility in Russia burning in 38 mentally ill people

being killed, or we may remember the fertilizer plant exploding in dozens dead or the bust.

I mean, it just seems like right now in our nation event after event of calamity is happening.

So the question for me that they're asking me is when I see that and speak to my own

heart or think about it and believe that God is totally in control or say to myself instinctively

God controlled that, God ruled that, God either in a planning way permitted that or ordained

that, then this is in conflict with my compassion.

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