The Squiggly Line of God’s Providence
Even in our sorest trials we have the highest confidence: all things work for good. Even in our darkest valleys we have the brightest light: all things work for good. Even in our lowest moments, our hardest days, our most difficult circumstances, this precious promise blesses us, sustains us, gives us hope: all things work for good for those who love God and are called according to his purpose.
As Christians we know that God’s sovereign hand draws a line that leads from suffering to meaning, from pain to purpose, from grief to good. There is no affliction that leads nowhere, no sorrow that is ultimately futile, senseless, or pointless. No, in some way they all work together for good, in some way they all bring blessing, in some way they all display the all-surpassing wisdom of a holy God.
But the line that leads from trials to goodness is not necessarily a straight line that extends unswervingly from one to the other. No, it may be jagged, crooked, squiggly, hard to trace—more like woven tapestry than pure geometry, more like spaghetti cooked and in the pot than spaghetti raw and in the box. Neither is it a single line that exists alone, as if one affliction leads to just one good. No, there may be a hundred lines leading from one sorrow and a thousand lines leading to one good. Our deepest grief may flow into a million goods and our greatest triumph may be downstream of a thousand sorrows.
For this reason we must guard ourselves against being too hasty in interpreting God’s providences. A impatient gardener may wish to see a flower bloom and in his haste pry open the bud. But this would serve only to harm the flower, for it must open in its own time, only when the seasons have changed, only when the spring rains have fallen, only when the sun has warmed the earth and sky.
And in much the same way, we must be careful not to mar God’s purposes through impatience. We must guard ourselves against being too quick to draw straight and easy lines from sorrows to goods and from goods back to sorrows. We must guard ourselves against too easily jumping from the “what” to the “why.” We must be careful not to tritely conflate why an event happened with how God may be using it, as if one great good is sufficient to explain one crushing sorrow. We must have confidence in God, for the same faith that saves us is the faith that is meant to sustain us even when we are afflicted, even when we are bewildered. As we trust God with our souls, we must trust him with our sorrows.
God’s mind is so much greater than ours, his hand so much stronger, his purposes so much vaster. In his grace he may allow us to see the beginnings of his purposes here and now, and in those we can truly rejoice. But all the while we know that we will see the full picture only in the day when his plan is complete and his purposes perfectly fulfilled. Until then we live by faith, not sight. Until then we long for the day that his divine hands will open the bud, the day when the flower will bloom, the day when we will be breathless with the beauty of it.
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A La Carte (July 6)
May the Lord be with you and bless you on this fine day.
A Short Treatise on Slavery
As he has preached his way through Ephesians, Barry has had to consider what the Bible says about slavery. Here are some of his reflections.
Prowling About
Patsy draws a comparison between a prowling cat in her yard and that prowling lion who seeks to devour us.
“Learn what authentic Christian ministry looks like, feels like, and sounds like.” —Sinclair Ferguson
Scottish theologian Thomas Boston’s warm spirituality makes his Complete Works essential to any Christian’s library. Read these newly reprinted gems to enrich your walk with Christ. (Sponsored Link)
Where Pastors Find Their Worth
Darryl has a word for pastors. “Pastors are tempted to get their identity and sense of worth from ministry success. If church goes well, and people approve of us, we feel good about ourselves. If church doesn’t go well, and people dislike us, we tend to feel like failures.”
How to Live for God Through the Fear of Failure
“What is success? And what is failure? Success may be defined as the fulfillment of a purpose or desire. We make a plan, the plan works, and we call that success. Failure as an experience is the opposite of success. We make a plan, the plan doesn’t work. We try something and it doesn’t work.”
What We Miss When We Skip the Book of Nehemiah
We know that every book of the Bible has its treasures, but can still sometimes excuse ourselves from reading some of them. This article explains what we miss when we skip over Nehemiah.
Good Advice for Living a Countercultural Life
Kevin DeYoung: “Most of us, when we think about our lives, we think about ourselves as the center of what’s going on. When you think about your life, you are the main character. You never think about your life as a supporting actor or actress in someone else’s story.”
Flashback: The Joy of Walking with God
Those who walk with God will never be left by him. God may withdraw a sense of his presence for a time to teach us to cry out for him, but he will never leave altogether or for too long.Hell is avoidable. Praise God. —Dane Ortlund
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A La Carte (July 8)
May the Lord be with you and bless you today.
(Yesterday on the blog: What a Wonder Is a Human Being!)
Did Jesus Tell Us to Give to Every Panhandler?
I think John Piper does a good job of answering this. “At the last judgment — I’ve thought about this many times — I think Jesus will be much more prone to commend lavish generosity to the undeserving than he will be to commend how shrewd we were in keeping for ourselves our few dollars rather than giving them away. I just can’t imagine Jesus saying, ‘Wow, you were especially good at being shrewd at not being taken advantage of.’ I don’t hear anything like that in Jesus’s teachings.”
When Technology Harms Discipleship
“Years ago before social media, televangelists and online ministries people would walk to a pastor’s home for advice. If they didn’t think it was such a serious matter they’d share with a friend or a few in the fellowship. But life has changed. We now live on one end of the city and go to church on the other side. Our favourite men of God live in a different continent from us. We send our prayers across the seas with a small gift to make sure they are answered. And anonymity means we can share very personal issues to strangers and get advice from people removed from our local context.”
Win Free Admission for Two: 2023 Ligonier National Conference
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Please note that free admission to the conference does not include travel or lodging expenses. (Sponsored Link)
Why Washed in the Blood of Christ is Better Than in my Washing Machine
This article helpfully compares one kind of washing with another.
3 Steps to Examining Your Faith
Here are some helps to obeying in the Bible’s admonitions that we examine our faith.
Who Knew When We Said “I do?”
How many of us really know what we’re doing when we say “I do?”
Was Jesus in the Grave for Three Days?
Lots of people have wondered why there appears to be a contradiction here.
Flashback: My Great Daily Challenge As a Christian
Why do I fail to live the way I want to live, the way God tells me to live, the way God enables and equips me to live? What is the great daily challenge?I had rather die a Covenant-keeper, than live a Covenant-breaker. —Christopher Love
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Two Years Later: What Aileen Is Thankful For
I have said a lot about Nick over the past two years. I have written a lot articles and done quite a number of interviews and even published a book. And I have been aware all the while that I can only speak to a small part of our loss, for there were many people who loved Nick and many who lost him. Today is the second anniversary of his death and I asked Aileen if she felt ready to write something. She said she did, and so today I am turning things over to her.
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When I was in Nashville for the Seasons of Sorrow book launch, Tim was asked several times “how are your wife and daughters doing?” It was asked often enough that, upon reflection, I think people understand that Tim has been nuancing the way he talks about my experience with grief as well as that of our girls. He has been very careful to only give voice to his experience of the last few years, and to word it in such a way that people don’t assume that the rest of the family’s experience necessarily matches his. I love him for this, and appreciate it very much. After all, Tim’s story is only part of the story. That’s because a dad’s grief is different from a mom’s grief. This makes sense. God has created each person to be unique which means each person’s experience of grief is unique. Each person’s relationship with the deceased is different as well, and this lends itself to differences in how each person grieves him. Adding another layer of complexity, each circumstance of loss is different as well. As we hear from people who have lost loved ones, I am continually struck by how different and unique each situation is, how grief shows differently in each person and each circumstance. This must be another example of how we are fearfully and wonderfully made.
Tim recently asked if for the second anniversary of Nick’s death I would be willing to write something about it—something that may help answer the question of how I am doing.
I was told it would probably take about two years before I felt anything close to back to normal, and it very much feels like the end of year two is the beginning of a new season. Because of this, it feels appropriate to look back and ponder what I am thankful for.
I am thankful for God preparing me.
God has been kind. He gave us one of the hardest things and yet he also gave so much to help us survive. Looking back, I now see how he prepared me years ago to weather such a storm. He blessed me by giving me a bedrock of theology that in my weakest moment I had to simply deploy. I can see how he gave us what we needed moment by moment to continue to walk in faith through such suffering. When nothing felt true, when God didn’t feel kind, when he didn’t feel good, when he didn’t feel just, I had a choice: I could choose to believe what my heart and my emotions were telling me—that God was cruel, unkind and unjust—or I could choose to believe what my mind knew to be true of God’s character and trust that eventually my emotions would catch up to my brain. There are days when this is still a struggle, but I have learned not to trust my feelings. Emotions cannot inform truth. Rather, truth must inform emotions. God didn’t abandon us, he walked with us and prepared us. I had to choose to see his presence, but he was there. I am so thankful in his mercy he prepared me.
I am thankful for God’s sovereignty.
God’s sovereignty is both comforting and terrifying at the same time. I think in the abstract I knew the Lord could choose to do anything he wanted in our lives. But suddenly, on November 3, I learned dramatically that he actually will do anything. Even so, I am so thankful God is in control. This situation would be only worse if God had no control over it. God had every right to chose this for us. I may not much like it, but I know he has purpose in it. As humans we seem to have a driving need to understand why things are happening. It makes us feel better if we can attribute a specific purpose to the hardships we are experiencing. But the reality is that in our human weakness and frailty, God has not given us that ability. We can guess, we can suspect, but we cannot know. God instead gives us knowledge of his sovereignty, and asks us to trust, by faith, that all things work together for our good and his glory. How this is true in Nick’s death I do not know. I don’t expect to ever know, on this earth, the full purpose of this suffering in our lives. But, I do know one day it will all make sense. I can wait, patiently, trusting in God’s character. I am thankful he sees the big picture, that he is in control of all things, and that nothing happens outside his will. I am thankful that God is sovereign.
I am thankful this is temporary.
I also know that as hard as this is, it is all temporary. Initially we divided the days up by doing the next hard thing. That might have been the call to the coroner or the call to the funeral home. It might have been picking out clothing or packing up belongings. But for a long while our life was divided into segments, defined by the next hard thing we had to do. As time has gone on those hard things have grown further apart. Even so, the reality is we will always have the next hard thing we have to do. Life in this fallen world dictates it. But one day, there will no longer be the next hard thing. I am so thankful that this world is not our home. Until that day, when the Lord calls me home, my job on this earth is not yet done. So I will wait patiently, enduring what I need to until one day there will be no more mourning, no more crying or pain, and every tear will be wiped away and death shall be no more. I am so thankful this is temporary.
Lastly, I am thankful I got to be Nick’s mom.
I have wanted to tell you all about Nick, but as I began to write this out I found that I still can’t. Another time perhaps, when the pain is a little less raw, when my heart hurts just little bit less, I’ll be able to share a bit more about my firstborn, the one who first made me a mom. God in his mercy gave me a son who brought light and joy to my life for 20 years. Despite all the sadness, I am so very thankful I got to be a mom to my Nick.
A few days after Nick’s death I wrote to a friend of mine and I expressed my longing for the day joy would return. I knew logically that one day it would come, but looking forward all I could see was heartache and sorrow. These have been hard, hard days. But God in his kindness and mercy has sustained us. We have grieved and mourned and wept. But as the two-year mark draws to a close, I am seeing that joy return—joy that is less tainted by sorrow. I am thankful. God has been present. And I think I will end here as I have ended every note I have written in the last two years: God is still good.
This is a special photo as it captured the first moment Nick began to respond to Aileen and ‘talk’ back to her.
