Last night, around 5:30pm eastern standard time, a jet carrying 64 passengers departed from Wichita, Kansas. Sixty four families had someone they loved aboard that aircraft for what should have been a routine flight less than five hours from their departure.

At around 9pm EST, sixty seven families’ lives were impacted in a way that will forever enact for them a “before and after,” phase of their lives. The American Airlines jet collided with a military black hawk helicopter that was carrying three passengers. The collision occurred as the jet attempted the descent to land at Reagan National Airport, just outside of DC, plunging sixty seven people, dads, moms, sons, daughters, sisters, brothers into the thirty seven degree waters of the Potomac River.

One eye witness described the collision as a “fireball,” in the sky. An emergency rescue operation is underway to recover any survivors, but early reports presume that all sixty seven people are dead.

All of them had plans for today. All of them had agendas, meetings, schedules. I would wager that they all had plans for tomorrow, this weekend, next week. Personally, my family has plans as far out as July. I know the crater that would devastate our home if my husband didn’t come home from work today. I feel the dread in my bones. For sixty seven people, they received a phone call informing them that there has been a terrible accident and they need to prepare themselves, their children, their parents, for the worst.

The illusion that we have a say in the events of our lives is simply a coping mechanism. We live under the idea that our meticulously organized, color coded schedule blocks are somehow the fibers that hold together the circumstances of our moments, but this just isn’t the case. The aviation world, experts, pilots are shocked by the “swiss holes” in flight technology that aligned perfectly and allowed this sort of tragedy to occur, but God wasn’t surprised.

I don’t believe in coincidences, whether good or bad. This was a tragic occurrence that was completely within God’s control and timing. The wives who are now widows, the children who will grow up without their mom or dad, the parents who lost children in this horrific accident are not unseen by God who is sovereign over all. His power and presence doesn’t stop tragedy from occurring. It is within the scope of His knowledge that tragedy occurs, and He does have the power to stop these terrible things from happening before they occur. However, the moments of despair and despondency, when we are faced with a trial that we don’t have the strength to endure on our own, are exactly the circumstances that drive us to the foot of the cross.

It is grace when we face suffering beyond our comprehension and mercy that is extended in the form of comfort and peace by the hand of His sustaining power because it is one means by which God will draw us to Him. The problem is that we view these circumstances through the lens of our temporal perspective and not through the lens of his eternal one. This doesn’t mean that grieving, devastation, anger or shock are inappropriate. At the tomb of his friend Lazarus, “Jesus wept” (John 11:35) and in the Hebrew the connotation for this use of the Hebrew word, “wept,” was a guttural cry of anguish and dismay at the suffering of God’s people at the hands of the consequence of sin, which is death.

God’s plan of redemption for the world began before the foundations of the earth were laid. He knew the serpent would deceive Eve, and Adam who was with her, in the garden and therefore introduce sin into the world. He knew that the law He gave to Moses for the Israelites would be impossible for them to keep, and that they would continually fall short of the holiness required of them to be reunited with Him. He knew that only by a savior could those who trust in Him be redeemed. Jesus came to earth to redeem His own and by His word we are provided all the information we need to understand why tragedies like this occur: because satan introduced sin into the world which separated creation from a holy God and allowed for pain, despair, destruction, division, and death. But Jesus came to overcome these things.

Jesus states in John 16:33, “these things {His instruction and teaching} I have spoken to you so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world.”

When Jesus came, died on the cross, and was resurrected three days later it was to secure, for those who would believe, a future that does not include happenstance tragedy. It will not include sickness, pain, or death. He died so that the payment for the sin of man, which made man irreconcilable to God through any other means than by grace through faith, was made.

Today is the day of salvation. Confess the sin that separates you from God and trust in the payment made by Christ on your behalf.

Pray for the families of this most recent tragedy. Unfortunately, there will be another one somewhere today, tomorrow, soon. The facade of control is that we have any but Jesus provides a solution. The tragedy and brokenness have already been overcome and can be accessed in a future day because of the blood of Christ.

Come soon, Lord Jesus.

God bless.