“I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand.” John 10:28
Imagine for a moment that there is a newcomer in your small group. He is the second youngest son in a huge and complicated family. When the group begins sharing prayer requests he reveals that his older brothers are bitterly jealous of him and he feels a sense of impending doom. A longtime member pipes up that God surely has a better plan for him than living with a competitive set of stepbrothers. The group agrees and immediately begins asking God to remove him from this situation, and perhaps, provide a new living space altogether. The next week, the man doesn’t show up for your group and you soon discover his siblings have sold him into slavery. The shock is palpable. Why didn’t God answer his prayer?
The familiar story of Joseph is timeless and not just because most of us experience sibling rivalry. It also shows us that God’s path for us is good, but it can also be long and winding and just plain unpredictable. If we had our way, God’s plan would never involve one of His children being falsely accused, incarcerated, or suffering physically.
We want to be like the character Michael in the movie Click, who gets a universal remote that lets him skip all the uncomfortable parts of life. Just the good stuff please. Michael finds himself fast forwarding through all of the pain, anything boring or unpleasant and before he knows it, he has zoomed past most of his life and missed all of the depth and meaning. Human life can be pretty pedestrian and repetitive. But purpose and growth flourish more in the daily toil than in the highlights of life. And when it goes from daily life to frightening or tragic, it is very easy to assume we’ve slipped out of God’s will.
My mother wrote about this in one of her prayer journals, “…I spent a summer working at a Christian conference center, a beloved spot that I’d grown up attending with my family. I grew so much during that time and made many treasured friends. I decided I wanted to return the following summer, but God said, “No.” I was crushed and humiliated. I felt unwanted and unsure of where my future was headed. But God knew I needed some focused time with my parents…it wouldn’t be long before I would be out of their home and on my own. That summer was full of happy memories, bike rides and time with my folks that I would never get again. I have never looked back at the summer with regret. In time, I found that the times in my life when God said ‘No’ deepened my trust even more.”
There are times when God’s answer of “no” or “wait” really is a sweet victory in the long run. We can look back in retrospect and realize that if we could see the whole plan, we would have chosen the same as God. It would be ideal if every answer from God could be wrapped up in a bow like this. But sometimes we won’t get a satisfactory reason in this life. We won’t always get an answer to the why. A dear friend of mine and I will often quote this verse to each other in those times, “And even if He does not…” He is still good (Daniel 3:18).
It took me some time to come to terms with losses in my own life. I wanted to be angry at God for being the cause of the breakup, the layoff, the miscarriage. How could He stand over me and orchestrate this grief? In time, I came to accept that this is earth, not Heaven, and we are all vulnerable to the tragedies of this broken world. He was never standing over me, in those moments of pain. He was always right next to me, weeping beside me. And even if I didn’t know it at the time, I could be deeply in pain and still be in the center of God’s will.
“I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand.” John 10:28