Most believers ascribe to God a sort of limited sovereignty, when it comes to evaluating how often God's hand is responsible for things in their lives. God is credited for the good things that happen to them, but not the bad things – that would be cruel, after all, or so they think!
That means that they would praise or thank the Lord when something happens to them that is advantageous, fair, freeing, or constructive. But if something happens that seems unfair, oppressive, abusive, or destructive, Satan or evil is blamed, depending on whether they gravitate toward the notion of a personal and malevolent Being or to an impersonal (and unbiblical) sense of Fate.
When you consider how many bad things happen in this world that evidently God is helpless to keep from happening, and when you consider how few truly or purely good things happen, the notion of God's sovereignty would seem quite limited.
That would make me very uncomfortable, to think that God is helpless to prevent bad things from happening to me. Bad things will, and do, happen to me. God comforts me with the knowledge that I can know that (not how) they happen by sovereign design and for good reasons.
Do bad things still hurt sometimes? Yes, but they do me no harm. You mean I can be hurt without being harmed? Yes! Hurt involves mental, emotional, or physical pain. Harm involves my standing in grace. Let life bring us what it will. Let it deprive us of its smile – even unto death. It cannot harm those God has sworn to protect, even if it kills us.
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