Welcome back Lonesome. I know how much you enjoy the Puritans, but I'll give you Ezekiel Hopkins, "On Glorifying God in His Attributes"
Nothing comes to pass without our heavenly Father. No evil comes to pass without his permissive providence, and no good without his ordaining providence to his own ends. Divine providence does not only ordain what effects shall come to pass, but also by what means, what causes, and in what order they shall flow. God has appointed not only the effect itself, but the means to accomplish it.
1. One must be extremely cautious in presuming to know God's sovereign will and purpose ie. who is he punishing will Hurricane Beryl right now? Isaiah 55:8-9
2. God is good, but can use evil to accomplish his purpose, which is ultimately for good and His glory - Genesis 50:20
3. God will use evil people doing evil things to accomplish his purpose ie. the Babylonians and Israel - Jeremiah 18:17
4. Our PRIMARY battle is spiritual (Ephesians 6:10-11) but will live in a world filled with physical conflict, and must pick sides, and IMHO sometimes fight
5. Both the North and the South in the War Between the States thought God was on their side.
Abraham Lincoln's March 30, 1863 proclamation establishing a National Day of Fasting and Prayer
It is the duty of nations as well as of men to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, and to confess their sins and transgressions in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon, and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in Holy Scripture, and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord. And, insomuch as we know that by His divine law nations, like individuals, are subjected to punishments and chastisement in this world, may we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war which now desolates the land may be but a punishment inflicted upon us for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole people?
We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven; we have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity; we have grown in numbers, wealth and power as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which has preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us.
It behooves us, then, to humble ourselves before the offended power, to confess our national sins and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.
