Have you ever thought about God’s providence and how it works in your life? A few synonymous for provenience would be: opportune, advantageous, favorable, auspicious, propitious, heaven-sent, fortunate, timely, well timed and expedient.
I personally believe that God’s providence works in the lives of Christians. How, I’m really not sure, but I have seen it happen too often, what Paul declares in Romans 8:28. That is that “all things work together for good for those who love God”.
By way of example: This past week our oldest son had to go somewhere to make application for membership to a shooting club. He had been there before, but on a whim turned on his GPS and followed its directions. On a back road he saw a car in a field, so he stopped to see if he could be of assistance. It turned out that the man had gotten a phone call and didn’t have bluetooth, so stopped to take the call. The man thanked him several times for stopping to check on him.
As my son proceeded he noticed the car following him, turn for turn, right up to the club building where he was going. When they got out of their cars the man asked what my son was doing there. It turned out that the man was a club officer and took care of the enrollment process himself, cutting any red tape that might have slowed things down. Could it have been God’s Providential Sight (GPS)?
Perhaps it was; when God proclaimed through Paul that all things would work out to the good, he didn’t specify that they had to be “spiritual” things. Could it have been “just a coincidence”? Perhaps, but I prefer to think that God watches over his people. That’s what faith is about, isn’t it? Believing that God is in control of our world, trusting in him to make things work out, even when we don’t understand the how, when or why? I’m not a big fan of “The Message” (a paraphrase of the Bible), but I like what it says of Hebrews 11:1. It reads, “The fundamental fact of existence is that this trust in God, this faith, is the firm foundation under everything that makes life worth living. It’s our handle on what we can’t see.”
I realize that not everything in our lives may feel like it is being touched or guided by God. There are a lot of bad things that happen, simply because there is evil in the world. Sometimes we choose poorly or make bad decisions, sometimes in our mind we do nothing wrong at all, but bad things happen. That doesn’t change the fact that God is in control of our world.
Maybe each of us should trust a little more in the real GPS, not necessarily that little box on our dash or in our phone. Maybe we should walk with a little more trust in God, or by Faith? What do you think?
