Devotion – October 10 – God’s Plans
For those who receive the October newsletter, you have already read this devotion, but I was reminded that there are many people who are reading these devotions who do not receive the newsletter. So, I am re-printing it for them (and also for you to think about this a second time – maybe new insights will come to you).
I am reading a prayer book written by Pastor William Orchard. He was a Presbyterian pastor who lived in the late part of 1800's and into the middle of the 1900's. Someone collected his prayers and put them in a book. They are deeply profound and I have been moved a great deal by them. In one, he prays: “It has pleased you to hide from us a perfect knowledge, yet You call for a perfect trust in you.”
That is quite a challenge, isn’t it? It is so easy to conclude everything is out of control. So we call up to God, asking for insight in how to deal with the issue that stands before us, but rarely does God come down and spell out for us exactly what we should be doing or even thinking, and that makes it hard! We are forced to come to this uncomfortable conclusion: God hasn’t given us “perfect knowledge” of his plans.
Yet, God still asks us to have perfect trust in him. It is like the parent who looks at his or her child who has climbed too high in a tree and is now afraid to climb down. “Trust me,” the parents says with outstretched hands. “I’m right here. I’ll catch you. You’ll be fine. I won’t let anything bad happen to you.” The child doesn’t have the “perfect knowledge” that their parents can catch them. The child doesn’t sit in the tree calculating their mass times the speed of acceleration on the way down, and concludes whether or not their parents arms are strong enough to catch them. What they ultimately depend on is not “perfect knowledge,” but “perfect faith.” Eventually, the child will jump because they have faith in their parents’ love and desire to protect them. The child knows they would never let anything hurt them, and because of that trust, they jump.
I come to you as a person who doesn’t have “perfect knowledge” of God’s plans. In fact, there are times when I question how perfect God’s plans are, because things seem real cockeyed right now. But, I do have this – I have “perfect trust” in God (okay not perfect, but I’m working on it). So, though I don’t understand the whys and what-fors of events lately, I will trust that God will bring it all together, ultimately for good. In that, I trust and live.
~ God bless, Dan