SCRIPTURE: “When times are good, be happy; but when times are bad, consider: God has made the one as well as the other. Therefore, no one can discover anything about their future. Ecclesiastes 7:14 NIV
THOUGHT: If you were God, how would you run the world? Say “yes to all,” like the Bruce Almighty character? Bruce learned, and was properly humbled, by the truth that there was a lot he didn’t know. He was banking his decisions on a kilobyte of data when God owned the computer and the cloud.
God is mystery, mostly. The fact that he invites us to know him at all, is mystery. And the God of mystery has ordered our future to remain unknown to us, cloaked by good times and bad, leaving us unable to discern God’s favor based on circumstance. This is a life a faith, not predictability.
The promise here is that God is fair, not capricious. God doesn’t show favoritism (Acts 10:34), he is generous with the seed he casts (Matt. 13:3-9), and rains on the just and unjust (Matt. 5:45). The future isn’t predictable based on our current circumstance, whether happy or difficult. Rain, like sunshine, will fall into every life. Trials and troubles, like happy times, will come to every soul. What we do with whatever happens starts to change the balance in our souls.
In the end, one of the biggest mysteries is that our Triune God didn’t spare himself the rain, the trials, the troubles, the pain, nor the death that all humans face. The writer of Hebrews encourages us to think of Jesus before we conclude that God must not love us very much due to present circumstances, “Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart (Heb. 12:3 NIV).”
As we consider all things mysterious, let’s not draw any quick conclusions in good times and bad, except they are both through God’s hand, and can be worked into the soil of our lives for God’s good purposes.
PRAYER: God, why you do what you do is so often mystery. Paul claimed you put us down in a specific place and time in hopes that we would seek you and find you (Acts 17:26-27). May we worry less about the mysteries we can’t unravel, and more about relationship with the God we love.
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Blogger Amy Clemens is the author of Walking When You’d Rather Fly: Meditations on Faith After the Fall. In it she explores childhood sexual abuse and how it impacted her faith (or lack thereof) for four decades. You’ll find not only her story, but better yet, the Big Story of God.
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