Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out! (Romans 11:33)
As I look at what I consider the rough times of my life, first, while I
think they seem rough, they don’t seem to compare with the rough times faced by
people around the world or throughout history. I have it easy. But that doesn’t
make the rough times I face seem any less rough. Sure, I’m not being drawn and
quartered, or put in a prison camp, but does that mean my pain and struggles
are any less real? No. Does it ease that pain even a tiny bit? No. So what
possible good are we to get out of information about the rough times others
face? Today’s verse is one of the answers.
We tend to like to have things kept very simple. God lets or causes
people to suffer because… one reason stated in 25 words or less. That explains
all suffering, through all time, everywhere! Except, of course, it doesn’t work
like that. God had Noah spend a hundred years working on the ark before God
destroyed the world, and we can’t imagine that God acted out of any motivation
but pettiness. How could those poor, hunter-gatherer sorts who were just trying
to live their lives have done things so bad that they had to be destroyed? First
– because they may not have been simple hunter-gatherers. We don’t know how
advanced or organized they were, and secondly because the world may have been
so messed up by then that only mass extinction and the flood could make it fit
to inhabit again. We don’t know, but God does.
God sent the Israelites into Egypt, where they became slaves. What sense
can that make when He promised to make them a great nation? Perfect sense,
because it protected them while they great large enough to be a nation, and it
gave them a chance to learn from one of the superpowers of the world, both the
good and the bad of governance.
God sent Jesus into Egypt as a toddler, to protect Him from people who
might have heard the prophecies and sought Him out.
And, failure and disobedience don’t necessarily mark the end of our
usefulness. Jonah ran away from God. Peter denied knowing Him three times. The
nation of Israel disobeyed, committed adultery, rebelled, and misbehaved in
every way they could think of, and God still kept His promise to save the world
through that nation.
Given the day I’ve had since I started writing this, I need to read it
about a thousand times. The point is simple. It may not make sense to us, but
it does to God, and He’s greater, wiser, and better at working these things out
than we’ll ever be. So we can and should rejoice in Him, and let Him work
things out. And that involves a word I’m encountering a lot lately – p.a.t.i.e.n.c.e.
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