A dear friend of mine has been a missionary in a remote area for the past 25 years. Her experience has appeared to be rather disjointed. The things she intended to do have been interrupted by other projects, by detours, and by things far beyond her control. Her mission board has sent her to places she never intended to go …or stay. People have come and gone through the years, sometimes suddenly departing without a substitute, causing her to fill in the gaps, taking on jobs for which she has not been trained, exceeding her abilities, and most often NOT what she REALLY wanted to do. She spoke frequently about having to make herself get up in the morning, knowing what she would have to do that day. She asked herself (sometimes daily), “What in the world am I doing here?” She has been highly frustrated at times by her fragmented experience, often apologizing for her bad attitude. Her life appeared to be made up of a million broken pieces.
I received a newsletter from her recently. Very suddenly, the pieces are beginning to fall into place and snapping together. “So THAT is why I was there. So THAT is why I learned to do that. So THAT is why I was stuck in that town for so many years…” Her question marks have become exclamation points. It was all there: the perfect timing, the deep relationships she had made, the skill sets she had mastered, even the changes in the political and social climate. Her words went on and on, and JOY leapt off the page. There was a reason for every experience, whether she had realized it or not. God was working far below the surface, moving everything into place. That work for which she initially went to the mission field was good, but God was doing something far greater. He just needed her to be faithful in what He had put before her. For just the right time, for such a time as this, God engineered everything.
For the past century, the world has been entrenched in the worldview of absurdity, that there is no reason or purpose for anything. All is random, so often we hear, and it is so easy to fall into that snare. But do we forget that it is a LIE? When we are faced with what we do not understand, that does not mean there is no reason for it. “Notion your mind with the idea that God is there,” says Oswald Chambers (My Utmost for His Highest, July 16). “Keep our minds filled with the notion of God’s control behind everything.”
That is not positive thinking,
but the reality of God.
His plans are always deeper than we can comprehend.
I stand myself right now in a mystery, as we all do in some form or another. And God reminds me every morning, “Work hard today. Make it count.” Nothing you do or experience will be for naught, as my grandmother used to tell me. God redeems it all. I have a quilt that she made, constructed from tiny bits of fabric, worn-out shirts and dresses, and what the world would consider rags. That which appeared to have no use at all formed a piece of artistry, all fitting together into something beautiful to behold.
Things do not just work out.
God designed it that way.
He is before all things,
and in Him,
all things hold together.
Colossians 1.17
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