When my daughter was around 4 years old, she spent some time at a park with her dad’s mom and dad. She was having a good time throwing rocks into a creek when her PawPaw warned her to be careful. The ground sloped down to the water, and he told her if she lost her balance and started tumbling toward the creek, he would likely hurt himself trying to catch her. Her Mimi piped up that she, too, would probably get hurt trying to save her. My daughter looked at them with some annoyance. “God is with us,” she said matter-of-factly, and she turned back to her game.

The little exchange impressed my mother-in-law enough that she had to relate the story when they returned. “She just said, ‘God is with us,’ and went on,” my mother-in-law told us. “Not like us adults.”

No, too often we adults say, “God is with us,” and then we continue to fret. We say “God is in control,” but we worry that He won’t take care of our situation. In fact, we even doubt He will take care of us.

Of course, there is a lot of evil in this world. People suffer, including Christians. Believing God is with us and that He is in control does not mean we can expect to escape all hurt. But we can expect that God will use our hurts for our good, if we believe our highest “good” is to be made like Christ. We can trust God to take care of us. We can leave our worry at His feet, and we can face life with a confidence that nothing — not trouble, hardship, persecution, famine, nakedness or the danger of the sword — can separate us from the love of Christ (Romans 8:35).

The ground beneath our feet might seem tilted toward danger, but we can rest assured because God has the whole world in His hands.

“For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8:38, 39 NIV.