Christians ask God for all kinds of things, and as Scripture tells us, if you don’t ask, you won’t receive. It would be nice to believe that God wants us to always be healthy, wealthy, and happy, but the evidence is that such things are not high on His list of priorities. We see Christians suffering from the same illnesses, tragedies, and disappointments as non-Christians, and it doesn’t seem due to sin, lack of faith, or lack of prayer. Why is this? As I type this, my 90-year-old mother is slowly dying. She is suffering and getting little pleasure from life. Why doesn’t God take her home now? Why is it so hard for a young father to answer his child’s question, "Daddy, why did Mommy have to die?" God’s original creation was "very good," but sin brought degradation to everything. All of God’s creatures, not just those who have rejected God, suffer from the effects that sin had on our world. This is the source of all the unpleasantness that we experience and see around us. The Bible has many records of healings, resurrections, and the amassing of personal wealth, but when seen in the light of all of human experience, these occasions seem to be exceptional, rather than the norm. What is responsible for these rare interventions into the workings of a sin-damaged creation? The miracles of Christ seem to have been aimed, not at human comfort, but at the establishment of his position as Messiah, Son of God. He didn’t raise everyone who died, he didn’t heal every sick person he saw, and he didn’t feed every hungry person in the world. All of this seems to indicate a general principle of nonintervention: God does not intervene in natural events unless there is a spiritual victory to be won. He decides, based on His wisdom and goals, whether the victory is worth the intervention.

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