365 Days with God - Day 58: String Theory

I'm giving myself a challenge. Read the Bible each day for a whole year, following the ESV Study Guide 1-year plan. Each day, I will post whatever God has revealed to me in His Word, and how it is changing me. A friend of mine once said that nothing has changed her life as much as reading the bible each day - and I'm excited for how this will change me. Join me on an adventure into the heart of God - and day by day, we can learn more about who He is and what that means to us!

- Andy Catts

Day 58, February 16, 2014

Readings: Psalm 58, Exodus 1:22, Exodus 2:1-22, 2 Chronicles 31, Acts 27:1-44, Acts 28:1-15

Occasionally, I ponder what is most amazing about God. What most demonstrates his limitless power. Is it the amazing universe he has made, where everything natural works together in harmony? Is it the creativity and limitless efforts of his creation, us, created in his image? Or something else?

For me, lately, it's been the amazing strategy he creates in connections and relationships. My view is limited to my own life - I know who I know, and I see only the outcomes that I have direct contact with. But God sees them all. You know that saying about time travel? That if a single butterfly was harmed, it could change the course of all history? God knows, sees, and has planned through every possibility.

Not only does he know what will happen, but he orchestrates outcomes for the growth of his heavenly kingdom. Despite our free will and mistakes, he is constantly working for our good. That doesn't mean he forces us into situations, but it does mean that he can take the worst things and create a new thread that leads to something amazing. He is not a puppet master, controlling our actions - but he is a great conductor, making beautiful music out of our disorganized chaos.

Then Pharaoh commanded all his people, "Every son that is born to the Hebrews you shall cast into the Nile, but you shall let every daughter live." (Exodus 1:22)

Now the daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe at the river, while her young woman walked beside the river. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her servant woman, and she took it. When she opened it, she saw the child, and behold, the baby was crying. She took pity on him and said, "This is one of the Hebrews' children." Then his sister said to Pharaoh's daughter, "Shall I go and call you a nurse from the Hebrew women to nurse the child for you?" And Pharaoh's daughter said to her, "Go." So the girl went and called the child's mother. And Pharaoh's daughter said to her, "Take this child away and nurse him for me, and I will give you your wages." So the woman took the child and nursed him. When the child grew older, she brought him to Pharaoh's daughter, and he became her son. She named him Moses, "Because," she said, "I drew him out of the water." (Exodus 2:5-10)

Nobody could have seen the good that would come out of this situation. Pharaoh, in his evilness, demands a mass genocide of all Hebrew male children. If I was a Hebrew in Egypt, I would think God was lost, absent...and out of control. How could this make sense? But out of the chaos, out of the evil, an amazing rescue plan is hatched. Into the house of the very enemy that declared war on Israel goes a Hebrew child. Raised in Pharaoh's house, he will be the one who leads Israel to freedom.

So many times in my life I am willing to believe that God is out of control, and I haven't even faced anything so horrible as genocide. But instead of trusting, instead of believing that something good could come out of it, I falsely believe that I need to intervene. That God isn't orchestrating freedom for me. But I don't have the power or knowledge that God does. His ability to affect the situation, to change it for the best, is so beyond mine that it is outside of comprehension.

So am I willing to trust in myself, or can I give up my illusion of control in exchange for the ultimate control and care of the God of the universe?