A Light for My Path

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.

Isaiah 55:8

In the Our Daily Bread devotional for February 12^th, the writer describes a trip her husband had planned to take to Africa years ago. The trip was unexpectedly cancelled at the last minute, but they were able to donate the money they’d collected for the trip expenses to the villagers they had hoped to visit. Just recently her husband met someone from that African village who spoke about the building that had been funded by the cancelled trip. It had served as a shelter for victims of abuse for many years.

The author reminds us that “It might be years before we’re able to look back and trace God’s influence through certain situations.” ^* This has certainly been true for me, most especially the experience of child loss.

I have said many times that if I could go back and redo my life, I wouldn’t change anything. Not because I always made good choices. Far from it. But I am in a good place in my life now. And I recognize God working in my life now more than at any time prior.

Well, I need to be completely truthful. If I could change one thing, I would in a heartbeat change the fact that my daughter died. I would exchange my life for hers, if I had that option. But I can’t and I don’t. For some reason I will never fathom, her life was destined to end on April 11, 2017. I don’t like it, and I don’t understand why God allowed it to happen. I cannot read God’s mind.

Nor do I want to. I have come to realize that my human mind cannot and should not comprehend all of God’s thoughts and ways. He knows the beginning and the end. My knowledge is finite. For now. I don’t know the future, because God, in His wisdom, is protecting me from that knowledge.

Think about it. If you knew the future, wouldn’t you rush forward towards all the good things that are coming, and try with all your might to avoid the bad things? But then we would miss the joy and surprise of the good things, and our mind would be tortured by the inability to stop the bad things.

Instead, God gives us the gifts of memory and reminiscence. We get to look back in awe at His influence. Realize the lessons we’ve learned. Be amazed at the times He held us back from the precipice. Comforted us in our sorrow. And taught us to trust Him about the things to come. Because His ways are better than our ways.

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Laura

^* Jennifer Benson Schuldt “Our Plans and God’s Plans”