1 Samuel 22:1-23:29
John 10:1-21
Psalm 115:1-18
Proverbs 15:18-19
I had an interesting conversation the other day with a Christian sister who was vehemently opposed to the current administration, and was convinced the president was an evil person. She was afraid for the country. I told her I was afraid for the country as well (both this, my adopted home, and my first home), but for very different reasons. This led me to ask myself an old question: how big is my God?
If I indulged a feeling of despair at everything happening today, it would be like saying God didn't exist, or He couldn't do anything. That God would not be pretty small.
So instead I used to pray that God change things to how I thought they should be. Then I realized that if I had a better version of the world than God did, then that God would be pretty small too.
What I find difficult is living the conclusion I am led to: that God has dominion over all situations. That everything that happens, good or bad, He will have permitted. The death of the 85 priests in today's OT reading, at the hands of a sinner-king God had already decided to remove? The collapse of the fortunes of David, who went so very quickly from the insignificance of tending sheep to being the Lord's anointed and killing Goliath, only to fall right back down again, fleeing for his life and a rag-tag band of comrades? Yes, even the suffering of His Son at the hands of Pilate? As difficult as it is to accept, yes - all of this. God will have permitted.
What then is a big God? The God who can take David's fall from grace, the murder of the priests, even the suffering and death of His only Son, and turn what we see as inexplicable tragedies into unimaginable victories.
We don't know how He might do that. And our understanding is no prerequisite, even less so our approval. What's left to us is to choose: do we trust Him or not? Do we trust Him when we do not understand, when we cannot possibly imagine, how something might be good? How big is our God?
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