Dear friend,
I want to tell you about a question.
Not a theological question. Not the kind of question people ask in Bible study or in seminary or in the formal conversations that happen inside church walls where everyone is performing a version of themselves that is slightly more composed than the real one.
The question I am talking about is the one people ask when the performance drops. When the service is over and the parking lot is emptying and someone lingers a little too long and then turns to me with something different in their eyes than what was there five minutes ago.
Or at a bedside. Or in a confessional. Or in a hospital waiting room where nobody is performing anything because there is nothing left to perform for.
I have been asked this question more times than I can count across fifty years with the Church. By farmers and lawyers and grandmothers and veterans and people I have never seen before and people I have known for decades.
It is always the same question underneath the different words people use to ask it.
And tonight I want to tell you what it is. And what I have learned to say in response. Because my answer has changed over the years in ways I did not expect. And I think the version I give now is the one that is most true.
The question is this.
Do you think God is actually in control of what is happening?
Not in the abstract theological sense. Not as a doctrinal position. In the specific, present-tense, looking-at-the-news-this-morning sense.
Do you actually believe that? Right now? With everything that is happening?
I have heard it asked in a hundred different ways. Sometimes it sounds like — Father, do you think God has abandoned America? Sometimes it sounds like — do you think any of this prayer is actually doing anything? Sometimes it sounds like — I believe in God but I am having a hard time believing He is paying attention to what is happening right now.
But underneath all the different words it is always the same question.
Is He actually in control? Or is the world just chaos with a religious explanation laid over the top of it?
Here is what I used to say.
For the first twenty years or so I gave the answer I had been trained to give. The theological answer. The one about sovereignty and providence and the mystery of God's ways being higher than our ways. The one with the Scripture references and the careful qualifications and the warm pastoral tone that said yes of course He is in control even when it does not look like it.
It was not a wrong answer. Everything in it was true.
But it was not quite honest. Because what I was really doing was giving people a theological framework when what they were actually asking for was something more personal than that.
They were not asking me to explain the doctrine of divine sovereignty.
They were asking me whether I believed it.
Personally. In my own life. After everything I had seen. After all the bedsides and the confessionals and the parking lots. After watching people suffer things they did not deserve and watching wicked people prosper and watching the world move in directions that seemed to have nothing to do with the God I had been reading about every morning for decades.
Did I actually believe it? Or was I just saying the right things?
That is a different question. And for a long time I was not answering it honestly.
Here is what I say now.
Yes. But not in the way I used to mean it.
I used to mean that God is in control the way a chess player is in control — moving pieces deliberately toward a predetermined outcome, nothing happening outside His intention, every event part of a plan He designed in advance down to the smallest detail.
I still believe in God's sovereignty. But fifty years of watching the world has given me a more specific and more honest version of what that means.
What I believe now is this.
God is not controlling events the way a puppeteer controls a puppet. He is working inside events the way a master craftsman works inside difficult material. He does not prevent the hard things. He is present in them. He does not stop the opposition. He uses it. He does not remove the suffering. He redeems it.
The difference between those two things is enormous. And it took me decades to understand it.
Here is the specific thing that changed my answer.
I kept reading Joseph.
Not once. Not as a sermon illustration. Again and again across fifty years. The pit. The slavery. The false accusation. The prison. The years of waiting with no sign that anything was moving toward anything at all.
And then Genesis chapter 50 verse 20. Joseph looking at the brothers who had sold him into slavery and saying you intended to harm me but God intended it for good.
God intended it for good.
Not — God prevented the harm. Not — God made sure the harm never happened. God took the harm that was intended and worked it toward something the people doing the harming could not have imagined.
That is a completely different kind of control than the one I used to describe. It is more frightening in some ways. It does not promise safety. It does not promise that the hard things will not happen.
But it is more trustworthy. Because it is the kind of control that works inside reality rather than above it. The kind that meets you in the pit rather than keeping you out of it.
I want to tell you why this matters for what you are watching right now.
I have been studying what is happening in this country and in the world through the lens of this question for years. And I have come to believe that what we are watching is not chaos with a religious explanation laid over the top of it.
It is the pattern. The specific, recognizable, Biblical pattern of God working inside difficult material toward something the people creating the difficulty cannot see and would not choose if they could.
The opposition is real. The attacks are real. The harm that has been intended is real. I am not asking you to pretend otherwise.
But God intended it for good is also real. And understanding that — seeing the shape of what He is doing inside what looks like chaos — changes everything about how you face the week ahead.
That is the whole reason I wrote They Tried To Stop Him: What The Bible Says About Donald Trump. Not to give people a theological framework. To give people what that woman in the parking lot was actually asking for when she said do you actually believe this.
Evidence. Specific, Biblical, historically grounded evidence that the pattern is real. That God is working inside this material. That you intended to harm him but God intended it for good is not just something Joseph said to his brothers three thousand years ago. It is something that is still true today.
Read it this weekend if you have not yet. I wrote it as my honest answer to the question I have been asked more than any other in fifty years. I think it is the most honest thing I have written.
You may find it by clicking on the image below:
Alternatively, you may find it at this link: https://fatherthomasletters.com/products/they-tried-to-stop-him-what-the-bible-says-about-donald-trump
So if you are the person who has been carrying that question — if you have been wondering late at night whether God is actually paying attention, whether the prayers are actually reaching anyone, whether what you believe is strong enough to hold against what you are watching — I want to give you the answer I give now.
Yes. But not in the way you might expect. Not the answer that keeps you above the hard things. The answer that meets you inside them.
He is in the pit with you. He was in the pit with Joseph. He is in the pit with the country you love. And He is working inside the material in ways that the people who threw you in there cannot see and would not choose if they could.
That is not a theological position. It is fifty years of honest observation by an old man who asked himself the same question more times than he can count and kept arriving at the same answer.
He is actually in control.
Just not the way I used to think.
God bless you, friend. Have a peaceful weekend.
With you in prayer always,
Father Thomas
This weekend I want you to do two things:
One. Read Genesis chapters 37 and 50 back to back this weekend. Read the whole arc — the pit, the slavery, the prison, the palace, the reunion. Pay attention to how long it took. Pay attention to how many hands were involved in moving Joseph forward without any of them knowing what they were doing. Let that sit with you.
Two. Read They Tried To Stop Him this weekend: https://fatherthomasletters.com/products/they-tried-to-stop-him-what-the-bible-says-about-donald-trump
I wrote it as my honest answer to the question I described tonight. Not the comfortable answer. The true one. I think it will give you something solid to stand on when the question comes for you again this week.