Sometimes our good Father surprises us with situations that we have been praying for: the job we asked for, the marriage we dreamed about, the children we asked for after years of waiting, the announcement that the adoption papers were finally ready, the scholarship for college, etc. But many other times He, our good Father, surprises us with the most unexpected circumstances: the death of one of our children, a sickness, a “no” to one of our prayers, a divorce, suffering. But no matter how God “surprises us,” we must never forget that He is a good Father, and He always gives us what our soul needs the most.
D.A. Carson writes in his book Scandalous,
“This is a truth not to be passed over lightly: God often surprises us; he is not to be domesticated by reductionistic theology; he takes the common things and turns them into surprising things. That is why large swaths of the Bible are written with various kinds of twist: you think you know where the words are going, and then the text jumps in another direction. Could anyone have predicted how the story of Job would turn out? Or how Habakkuk would turn out?”
I don’t know the twists that my story, or my children’s story will have. How many things that I am “sure” will happen in a certain way will turn out differently? I don’t know. But it is so incredibly comforting to know that my Father in Heaven is good, perfectly good and He has promised that all things work together for good for those who love the Lord, for those who have been called according to His purpose.
We don’t know the words in each one of the chapters of our lives, but we sure know the ending:
“And they lived happily ever after in the arms of their Heavenly Father and sin and death were no more.”
Resting under God’s Sovereign hand,
Becky
