As I write this on Easter morning, I am rejoicing. It’s a wild world, a time when we’re not able to gather with the rest of the Body of Christ in person, but still the Truth remains: Christ is risen! He is risen, indeed!

On Good Friday this year, I was struck by a new realization, a new lesson and perspective on the sovereignty of God. The Cross and Resurrection reveal the ultimate story of God in control of circumstances that we don’t understand. This is both in the big picture of prophecy and salvation of Man, as well as in a smaller way I noticed for the first time this year as I slowed down to reflect on Christ’s suffering.

Pretend we don’t know what happens three days after the crucifixion. Imagine we’re there, at the Cross, witnessing the Son of God suffer and die. I think I’d question: Where is God in this? How could He allow this horrific act to happen to His Own Son? God could stop it! Why doesn’t He? Doesn’t He love His Son?

Some of those questions (or variations of them) are ones we might ask in our own life circumstances. In our doubting. In our own suffering. When we don’t see the end of a long and difficult season. When we can’t understand the greater purpose or bigger picture.

Yet God did not stop the crucifixion of Jesus. It was not out of God the Father’s lack of power. It was not out of God the Father’s lack of love. It was not out of God the Father’s lack of goodness. Christ Himself said, “‘Or do you think that I cannot appeal to My Father, and He will at once put at My disposal more than twelve legions of angels?’” (Matthew 26:53, NASB). Instead, it was because of power, because of love, because of goodness that the Father allowed His Son to suffer and die. Because God saw the bigger picture: the coming resurrection and salvation for the world. In our own sufferings, our own seasons of doubt, our own questioning the state of the world (perhaps even now, in the strangeness of this season), the Truth of God’s sovereignty is Good News indeed. Just as there was purpose in Christ’s suffering and death—events that we would not have understood if we had lived through them—there is purpose in our own trials.

God sees the long game. He sees the end goal. With Christ, He saw the resurrection, He saw the restoration. Because of that, we can take heart that restoration will come. It may not look like what we expected—the Jews expected the Messiah to be a physical salvation, not a spiritual one. Yet still, in the end, our hope in God will not be in vain, for He is our Savior and He loves us.

In the midst of our trials, we can endure because of this Truth. Our suffering is only temporary. Jesus Christ has resurrected and brought us new life! When the world is wild and crazy—like on this Easter—we can rest in the words Jesus spoke to His disciples on the night before He died: “‘Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful…In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world.’” (John 14:27 & John 16:33b, NASB).

May the peace of Christ be unto you this Easter.