Yiddish Proverb: Can’t control wind, only adjust sails

Posted on February 25, 2012 by StriderMTB

There is on old Yiddish proverb that says, “You can’t control the wind but you can adjust your sails.” Would it be safe to say that God doesn’t control the winds of evil, but in his sovereignty He can adjust the world’s sails to use it for possible good? His sovereignty is best understood, not in ordaining all evil, but seeking to overrule it with good. Greg Boyd has a couple insightful remarks on this: “We can be assured that God has a good purpose for every tragic event and yet deny that any tragic event happened for that good purpose…The challenge is to fathom an intelligence so great it has an eternally prepared good purpose for every POSSIBLE event that MIGHT unfold.”

About StriderMTB

Hi, I'm Matt. "Strider" from Lord of the Rings is my favorite literary character of all time and for various reasons I write under the pseudonym "StriderMTB. As my blog suggests I seek to live out both the excitement and tension of a Christian walk with Christ in the 3rd world context of Asia. I started my blog as an unmarried man who was blessed to oversee an orphanage of amazing children in South-East Asia. As of 2022, I am a happily married man to an amazing missionary wife serving together on the mission field. I hate lima beans and love to pour milk over my ice-cream. I try to stay active in both reading and writing and this blog is a smattering of my many thoughts. I see the Kingdom of God as Jesus preached it and lived to be the only hope for a broken world and an apathetic church.

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