The Lord took no pleasure in my broken neck. Like any father who has compassion on his children, it pained his heart to see me hurt. Yet at the same time, it pleased the Lord to permit my accident. My spinal cord injury was something he sovereignly designed in and for his good pleasure.
God’s ways are so much higher than ours, he has the capacity to look at the world through two lenses — through a narrow lens and a wide-angle one. When God looks at a painful event through a narrow lens, he sees the tragedy for what it is. He is deeply grieved. . . . When God looks at that same event through his wide-angle lens, however, he sees the tragedy in relation to everything leading up to it, as well as flowing out from it. He sees a mosaic stretching into eternity. It is this mosaic with all its parts, both good and evil, that brings him delight.
— Joni Eareckson Tada, Pearls of Great Price, July 6 entry