God's Mysterious Ways

My wife Leah tells me all the time (because she’s a forgetful storyteller…) about a particular game that her father would play with her and her sister when they were young. The setting for the game had to be just perfect. They had to be driving and it had to be raining outside. And then at just the right moment, perhaps the stars were aligned just right or something like that, Dad would stop the rain. That’s right, one moment the water drops were pounding on the windshield and the next they simply weren’t. It only lasted for a second but Dad’s power was undeniable. Of course, the two young girls were just absolutely astonished and perplexed as to how their father was able to control even the elements of nature.

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Turns out, years later his secret wasn’t as mystifying as they had first thought when they were younger. All it took was Dad being able to spot a bridge ahead and then to play it up when they passed under. No wonder it only lasted a moment!…

I think this story might, in some ways, parallel the manner in which God acts on our lives. Often, we see the work of His hands, be it in our marriage, or our jobs, or any other area of life, and at the moment of his working we’re astonished or perplexed. We don’t understand how God did what He did or more likely, we don’t understand WHY God did what He did. We can’t understand why God allowed something to happen. Maybe it’s with a job denial. Perhaps you lost a child. Or maybe recent events are forcing you into an undesirable position. All such situations solicit the desperate question “why?” It’s this not-knowing which we often times allow to cause us a myriad of anxiety. Instead of just trusting in God and putting our faith in Him, we spend time and energy stressfully trying to understand things that we weren’t really meant to understand in the first place.

So perhaps instead of always trying to “figure God out” and put a finger on exactly what he’s cooking up in our lives, perhaps our response really should be nothing but pure trust. And who knows maybe years later, in hindsight, you might find that the answer was as simple as going under a bridge. He knows what He’s doing.

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.” -Proverbs 3:5