I am making my way quickly through John Piper’s little book A Sweet & Bitter Providence:  Sex, Race, and the Sovereignty of God. I actually bought the book for my wife because I know that her mentor and she recently completed a study of Ruth.  I just thought I should read it first and make sure Piper would not be misleading my wife in anyway .

As you can see from the subtitle, the book is about the sovereignty of God as it is worked out in the lives of those contained in the book of Ruth.  Here is an except from the book as Piper illustrates the sovereignty of God and how trusting God’s providence leads to a healthy, worshipful Christian perspective and life:

A Sovereign Bullet

For example, on April 20, 2001, the Peruvian Air Force shot down a missionary plane, mistaking it for a drug courier. In the plane were the pilot Kevin Donaldson and a missionary family, Jim and Veronica Bowers and their two children, seven-month-old Charity and six-year-old Cory. Veronica had Charity in her lap sitting in the back 28 of the Cessna 185. As the bullets sprayed the plane, one of them entered Veronica’s back and passed through her and into her daughter. Both died. The pilot, with shat­tered knees, crash-landed the plane in a river, and the other three survived.

Seven days later at the memorial service in Fruitport, Michigan, Jim Bowers gave his testimony and explained why the sovereignty of God in the deaths of his wife and daughter was the rock under his feet.

Most of all I want to thank God. He’s a sovereign God. I’m finding that out more now. . . . Some of you might ask, “Why thank God?” . . . Could this really be God’s plan for Roni and Charity; God’s plan for Cory and me and our family? I’d like to tell you why I believe so.

He goes on to give fifteen reasons. In that context, he says, “Roni and Charity were instantly killed by the same bullet. (Would you say that’s a stray bullet?) And it didn’t reach Kevin, who was right in front of Charity; it stayed in Charity. That was a sovereign bullet.”

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But what about the Peruvian fighter pilots? Didn’t they have wills? Didn’t they make mistakes or, perhaps, even sin against an innocent missionary family? Jim Bowers said,

“Those people who did that simply were used by God. Whether you want to believe it or not. I believe it. They were used by Him, by God, to accomplish His purpose in this, maybe similar to the Roman soldiers whom God used to put Christ on the cross.”

We will see from the story of Ruth and from the cross of Christ that in this life our hope in the next depends on God’s reign over all things. It may be hard to embrace when the pain is great, but far worse would be the weak­ness of God and his inability to stop the blowing of the wind and the flight of a bullet.