“Only the Word is the answer to rightly reading the world, because The Word has nail-scarred hands that cup our face close, wipe away the tears running down, has eyes to look deep into our brimming ache, and whisper, “I know. I know.” The passion on the page is a Person, and the lens I wear of the Word is not abstract idea but the eyes of the God-Man who came and knows the pain. How does the Word read the world?” -One Thousand Gifts, Ann Voskamp
Isaiah 14:24: “Surely, just as I have intended so it has happened, and just as I have planned so it will stand.”
God is in everything. He is in control of everything. Everything on heaven and on earth is ultimately under his authority. Yes, we live in a world torn apart, bleeding, dripping in agony because of sin. The war happening unseen in the heavenlies even as we speak, is very real, for Satan comes only to steal, kill and destroy. To steal our joy, to kill our hope, to destroy our faith in God. Satan does roam around like a lion, mouth open for the kill-seeing who he can devour. Yet, he is still under the submission of God. And the Word promises us that God’s eyes search the earth-looking for those who are faithful to Him. And there is nothing, absolutely nothing that can snatch us out of His hands.
Colossians 1:17-18: “We look at this Son and see the God who cannot be seen. We look at this son and see God’s original purpose in everything created. For everything, absolutely everything, above and below, visible and invisible, rank after rank of angels-everything got started in him and finds its purpose in him. He was there before any of it came into existence and holds it all together right up to this moment. And when it comes to the church, he organizes and holds it together, like a head does a body.”
How quickly I get caught up in my day-to-day things that aren’t going as planned and I lash out at God. How I often fear what future loss could look like in the building up of my faith-I hear stories of moms thrown in prison for their faith-leaving their families behind. I shudder. I read stories of parents who lose a child. Of children who are born not whole and with short life expectancies. Of husbands being persecuted for their faith. I hear stories of innocent children who were abused, of precious girls who were raped-an 11 year old girl raped by her father (here in the town where we live). Despicable! Prostitutes who sell their bodies because they feel they have nothing else to offer to survive. In South Sudan, 50,000 children are expected to die of hunger or disease by the end of the year. I shout at God, WHY? This is not FAIR! It’s not their fault. Don’t you see them? Don’t you hear their cries? My heart breaks in two for them. What if that were me? How can our good God allow such bad things to happen to us?
“Does disaster come to a city unless the Lord has planned it?” Amos 3:6
Job 1:21: “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”
The Lord whispers to my heart and I gasp. I feel like God owes me only good things. I have such an entitlement spirit. This perspective does not lend to me having a grateful heart and focusing on God’s grace. Instead, I quickly get mad at God when things don’t go the way I want them too. I live in fear when I think about the things that could happen to hurt in the future. Where is my trust in God? Where is my eternal perspective? I am a sinner. I am broken, ugly, fallen from God. Jesus has saved me-washed me clean by grace. I need to be thankful that I have been given this day to live. I don’t deserve it. I am not good. The saying “why do bad things happen to good people?” is simply untrue. There is nothing good in me. I am a sinner whose little attempt at holiness on my own is nothing but filthy rags in the sight of our holy God. The I am. The God who simple spoke and His WORDS brought life into this world in the beginning-creating the unseen and the seen.
“See now that I, I am He, and there is no god besides Me; It is I who put to death and give life. I have wounded and it is I who heal.” Deuteronomy 32:39. Yes, this is true. I know it deep down-in the very depths of my soul. I know it but I often forget it. I know it but often don’t want to remember because it hurts. For we do live in a battle every day. Because we live in a world fallen by sin, we will struggle and just as in any war, we will be wounded. We will sometimes be maimed. We will sometimes lose family members, close friends. But we must have the eternal perspective. Our time here on earth is but a fleeting moment compared to eternity.
“The spirit-to-spirit combat I endlessly wage with Satan is this ferocious thrash for joy. He sneers at all the things that seem to have gone hideously mad in this sin-drunk world, and I gasp to say God is good. The liar defiantly scrawls his graffiti across God’s glory, and I heave to enjoy God...and Satan strangles, and I whiten knuckles to grasp real Truth and fix that beast to the floor.”
-One Thousand Gifts, Ann Voskamp
My eyes must wear the lens of God’s Word. To see that our lives here on earth are but a part of the bigger story of God’s redemption plan for the world. Ephesians 5:20 calls us to “always give thanks for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
ALL things.
The good things and the bad things.
The beautiful and the horrendous.
For God can work good out of EVERY situation.
These are hard words to swallow and even harder to live by. I don’t claim to do this like I should. It is my desire to. For my faith to be like Job’s-when everything, everybody, even his own body was ripped away and left bleeding-He still chose to praise God. Oh my God, I want a faith like that! Help me to view the World through Your Word, through Your precious son.
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