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The God Who Reigns over the Coronavirus
I also said in chapter 2 that the sweetness of God’s word
is not diminished in the midst of this bitter providence—
not if we have learned the secret of “sorrowful, yet always
rejoicing” (2 Cor. 6:10). I said we would come back to this
secret. Then I summed it up in a sentence: The same sovereignty
that could stop the coronavirus, yet doesn’t, is the very
sovereignty that sustains the soul in it. Knowing this makes
all the difference. So is it true?
WHAT GOD WILLS, HE DOES
My aim in this chapter and the next is to show that God is
all-governing and all-wise. He is sovereign over the coronavirus.
I want to show that this is good news—indeed,
it is the secret of experiencing the sweetness of God in his
bitter providences.
Saying that God is all-governing means he is sovereign.
His sovereignty means that he can do, and in fact does do,
all that he decisively wills to do. I say decisively because
God, in a sense, wills things he does not carry through. He
can express desires that he himself chooses not to act on.
In that sense, they are not decisive. He himself does not
let such willing or desiring rise to the level of performance.
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