Hello friends! I hope you are all having a great week and are looking forward to celebrating Christmas!! The title of this chapter kind of took me aback for a moment. God's SURPRISING Sovereignty. I was curious to see what CS meant by the word surprising. It's one of those things that I feel we know, but sometimes we can't fully comprehend and understand the purpose and meaning. So lets dig in!
On page 123 CS opens referencing Job. And how Job took God's silence and slow response as Him neglecting Job. I feel this a lot. Taking God's silence as absence. How often do we assume that God is not there because He refuses to act on our timing?!
Page 125 CS directs our attention to this fault we have. "God has no night. God has no day. God has no month. God has no year. God has no past, present, or future... He transcends it all... He sees all the movie of our life all at once, in a flash, along with millions and billions of others going on simultaneously-- past, present, and future. Which makes our little bit of space on the lake seem like a cage called time."
How perfect is this description? How real is this description? And at the same time, it is infinitely difficult for our minds to grasp. God. Has. No. Time. Because God is time. He created time. He created us to think of beginning and end.
But this is tricky: "No matter how we rationalize, God will sometimes seem unfair from the perspective of a person trapped in time...until then (when we are with God in Heaven), we will not know, and can only trust in God who does know" (Yancey qtd. by CS 126).
Again, also cool. We were made to want God. So. Cool.
Another thing that I LOVED. Yancey's definition of faith: "Faith means believing in advance what will only make sense in reverse" (qtd 126).
Hebrews 11:1 :"Faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see."
A friends sometimes asks why I believe in what I believe as I have no physical proof. My answer always comes back to faith.
But it's not easy being a Christian. Waiting for God is difficult. We are prone to live in immediate action. We want quick answers. But even worse is when we need answers, when we need help. On page 127 CS references the Holocaust. I still have no idea the plan behind the homicide of an entire nation. I just have faith and know that God is sovereign. CS wants us to remember:
1. "Life is filled with sustained periods of silence. Often. But those periods of God's silence are just as significant as the times when He speaks. They're far more painful, but they are nevertheless significant" (128).
Silence and waiting scare me. As I sit and think and circle my mind around this topic, I still feel lost. I do know, that when I pray tonight, I will cling to the comfort that God is listening.
2. "The turning points of life, the significant events, are often subtle... In the mystery of God's timing, subtle things occur that the sensitive heart picks up. That's the role wisdom plays in life. Reading life's subtleties is what Christian maturity is all about" (129).
Again, I'm going to go back to David Platt's Radical. He says it so uniquely.. it resounds: "In our quest for the extraordinary, we often overlook the importance of the ordinary, and I'm proposing that a radical lifestyle actually begins with an extraordinary commitment to ordinary practices that have marked Christians who have affected the world throughout history."
God is using these humdrum moments to shape us... Sigh... I know. I feel like everything is shaping us. But think back to Esther. She went from being an orphan to being queen. At times she probably experienced boredom. Loneliness. Maybe she dealt with angry customers every day in her previous lifestyle only to learn patience. She had to learn to notice subtleties in life... open circumstances to allow her to share happiness... maybe she had opportunties to share her faith. All elements that God used to shape her for this time!
"Esther had a sensitive ear, a wise heart; she sensed something wasn't quite right. So she didn't push it. She knew when to act-- and she knew when to wait.
Are you as sensitive as that? Do you know when to listen? Do you know when to speak up-- and when to keep quitet? [...] Are you sufficiently in tune with God to read His subtle signals?" (CS 130).
This is something I need to learn. I do pray for complacence in my present situation. I pray for signs. I get angry when I don't get signs... or sometimes I try to make a sign out of nothing. I need more sensitive ears...
But aren't we so thankful that we have Esther to reference! God's name is absent from the entire book. He is silent in many areas. But when he is very vocal, He is heard.
CS points out again God's surprising sovereignty: "Don't ever try to convince me that some situation in this life is absolutely permanent [...] He can move in the affairs of your community. He can alter decisions of presidents and prime ministers and present-day kings and national dicators. No barrier is too high, no chasm is too wide for Him, because He is not limited by space or time, by the visible ot the invisible" (132).
To nonbelievers, God's suprising sovereignty has other names: luck. coincidence. chance. fate. irony. I love how CS points this out. Cause if you think about it, God has everything numbered. He is motion and time. He makes the patterns and framework. Shouldn't we take great comfort in knowing that He made all things, and He knows what is going to happen??
To close, CS gives us "life preservers" on pages 135-136 to help us with our wait.
1. "The Fog on your lake is neither accidental nor fatal. So while swimming, listen very carefully and patiently for His voice [...] God gave you a mind. God gave you reason. God gave you a unique sensitivity; it's built into your spiritual system, and each person's system is tuned differently."
2. "The workings of God are not related to our clocks; they are related to our crises." Enough said.
3. "The suprises in store are not merely ironic or coinidental, that are sovereignly designed." I love this. We are a mere design in his plan. And He is precise and perfect. As is His timing.
lets rejoice in the upcoming event that is my favorite time of year. also, when you are listening to carols about Baby Jesus, I hope your heart smiles and your day brightens! My favorite part of Little Drummer Boy (Faith Hill edition is my fav.) is the very end.... "then He smiled at me."
loveandprayers
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