We read in Psalm 139 of the all-knowing and ever-present God, “Your eyes saw me unformed; in your book all are written down; my days were shaped before one came to be.”
Those ideas are reinforced in Jeremiah 29:11, “For I know well the plans I have in mind for you...” And in Job 1:21, “The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away...”
So, did God plan and orchestrate the deaths of our children? I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this question, wanting truth as much as comfort.
There’s a difference between God knowing the number of our days and God deciding the number of our days. God is outside of time, so he can see all of human history at once. He is ever-present to every moment simultaneously, which also means he knows the number of days for each of us, without necessarily deciding for us which day is our last.
We tend to want easy, one-size-fits-all answers, and when something doesn’t fit, we throw it under the rug of “mystery” and stop thinking about it. As convenient as it might be, I don’t think we can blanket all deaths as the same in where God’s hand lies. Each death is unique in its circumstance. A child’s accidental death is different from a murder, which is different from a suicide, which is different from a peaceful death at the end of a long, well-lived life. In many cases it seems most fitting to see that God has allowed the death, not caused it. In my case, this is where I find peace. My son’s death seems most fittingly to be an accident of a being human in a fallen world—not caused or orchestrated by God because his time was up.
God never wills for a person to be murdered, or for someone we love to be hurting so deeply that they are driven to take their own lives. Those are deaths that are allowed and known by our God of love, but not decided by him.
In other cases, it seems pretty clear that a life has fulfilled its purpose and it brings peace the to family that the timing of death is exactly how it was “meant” to be. Maybe those are lives that have been lived as they were numbered by God to be.
Disease and death were never part of God’s desire for us. But rather, they are the effect of human sin. He does not want these things for us, but comes to meet us in our sorrow—like the day Jesus wept with Mary and Martha at the tomb of their brother. He hates death, and the sorrow it causes, so much that he sent his son, the Word made Flesh, as a means to conquer death and to give us the eternal life he had dreamed for us.
It helps me grasp where God could be coming from in our suffering when I bring it down to a human level. As parents, it can be painful for us to see our kids suffering. Sometimes, I make them suffer, pushing them to eat their vegetables and clean their rooms. Sometimes their suffering is not my doing but rather due to accident, cruelty from others, or simply one of the natural hard parts of being human. Sometimes their hard stuff is a natural transition, like the kid you have to peel from your leg to send them into their first day of kindergarten. Whatever the cause of their pain, I want to be with them and support them through it.
If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! Mt 7:11
So, was it God’s decision and desire for your loved one to die when and how they did? I don’t know, but I bet if you dig deep and let the movements of peace and love be your guide, you just might find the answer you are seeking. Either way, God meets us in our sorrow with a promise of resurrection and eternal life.