How knowing He’s ‘God of all’ helps those who suffer
By Jessica Brodie
Have you ever found God in the most bizarre of places? Somewhere you never, ever expected to find God, yet there He was?
There’s a song I adore (yes, I’m sharing another song… can you tell I’m a big music-lover?) called “Starry Night,” by Chris August. You can watch the video here. There’s a line that grabs my heart and won’t let go: “From the birds that sing in the tallest trees, to the human life of you and me, from the desert sands to the place we stand, He is God of All, He is Everything.”
The song is a praise song in the truest sense of the word, about how God truly is God of all—He created everything, controls everything, and reigns supreme over everything. I’ve known this truth for a while; most of us do. It’s often easy to see God and His goodness in the wonders of the world. We see a glorious sunset, the vast expanse of the Grand Canyon, or a breathtaking waterfall, and our hearts catch as we marvel at His works.
But God isn’t just the God of these good things. He’s the God of all—good or bad, happy or sad. He is with us in our darkest moments as well as in our pinnacles.
Indeed, sometimes that’s exactly where we find God: at rock bottom, when we’re so desperate, lonely, and hopeless we can finally open our eyes enough to see Him.
I remember meeting Jesus sobbing on my knees on my bathroom floor. I knew about Him before then, claimed to be a Christian, even followed Him, but before I truly “met” Him that day, I see I only knew Him in the abstract. When I finally met Jesus the man, a real person, God become flesh, it was in the depths of my deepest pain. For that’s when my heart was open, raw, and beaten-down enough to realize I couldn’t do life on my own. I needed Jesus in order to step into the future.
I’ve found God in other tough moments—at my child’s hospital bed, my grandmother’s deathbed, and the day I sold what I thought would be my kids’ childhood home. I’ve found Him during the flu and in the throes of a migraine, in a rotten-awful fight with someone I love, and the day I spent what was then my last dollar.
I find Him still, in all sorts of unexpected and expected ways. The sunlight peeking through the rainclouds. The giggles of my kids and stepkids. The vivid green leaves along the trail I hike.
For God is God of everything. He is the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end, God of the ups and downs and everything in between.
In “Hills and Valleys,” Tauren Wells sings about God being “God of the hills and valleys,” as we are promised in 1 Kings 20:28. If you’re not familiar with that story, it’s pretty interesting. In 1 Kings 20, the smaller, far weaker army of the Israelites is about to face a massive battle with the mighty Arameans. God helped the Israelites win the first battle, but the Arameans chalked it up to luck, assuming the Israelites had won only because they’d fought in the hill country. The Arameans thought the Israelites’ deities were “gods of the hills,” so they planned to fight their next battle on the plains, sure they would prevail. Of course, we know God isn’t just “any god” but God Almighty. God spoke to His prophet, who approached the king of Israel with an encouraging word: don’t be afraid, for “because the Arameans think the Lord is a god of the hills and not a god of the valleys, I will deliver this vast army into your hands, and you will know that I am the Lord’” (1 Kings 20:28). God did what He promised, and the Arameans were convinced.
Basically, God was saying, I’m not some lowly false idol only in charge of a small area. I am King of Kings, Lord of All—of the mountains and the hills, the valleys and the pits, the oceans and the seas, the deserts and the rainforests. All.
It’s not just location, though—God is with us in all seasons of life, all trials and tribulations.
Psalm 23:4 reminds us, “Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.”
So look around. Whatever you are going through, God or bad, God is there.
And that is a truth we can rest in.