" God, all the world is an opportunity to behold more of your transfiguring darkness into grace. I won't ever get over it. I'm beholden to it all my life, now and forever. I want to accept all You give and learn to see into the darkness as You do, as a place to fill with Your light. Help me Father. Help me to see in the dark." One Thousand Gifts Devotional.
And I will lead the blind
in a way that they do not know,
in paths that they have not known
I will guide them.
I will turn the darkness before them into light,
the rough places into level ground.
These are the things I do,
and I do not forsake them. (Isaiah 42:16
If there is one thing I have learned over the course of the past few years, hard years, painful years, it is that God is faithful, even in the darkness.
In all things and no matter the circumstances we must remember that nothing, not one thing that happens to us is a surprise to God. He knows these things, He has allowed these things, dark as they may seem to you, senseless to you, unfair to you, He has allowed them. This might seem like something a harsh and unloving God would do, but in those thoughts we must remember all that He has told us, about who He is, about what His purpose is.
He is:
All Powerful
He is everywhere present.
He is all knowing.
He is sovereign.
He is holy.
He is absolute truth.
He is righteous.
He is just.
He is love.
He is merciful.
He is faithful.
He never changes.
All that He does, all that He allows, all that He brings about in our lives will and does serve His purposes, and His purposes are always for our benefit. Always.
His grace is always available, a full measure, all that you need, for each day. Open your eyes. Ask Him to show you all the ways he blesses You, ask Him to show you how to see Him at work in what you perceive to be total darkness. From every single thing comes grace and blessing.
I learned long ago that sometimes word pictures assist us in understanding something. I have always thought of my children and my great love for them in defining how God allows bad things, hurtful things, to occur in our lives. I look back to when one of my boys was very sick. I took him to the doctor, and they informed me that he would have to receive two shots, they would inject them into his legs, and that the shots were extremely painful. They informed me that they would burn like fire. I helped to hold him down while they injected him. I will never forget his eyes, they burned into me, eyes that screamed betrayal, how could I, his mother, the one who always defended, always comforted, always gave anything and everything on his behalf, allow this to be done? He was too young to understand why, too young to know that the reason I held him down, the reason I allowed them to hurt him, was because of my love for him, my desire to save him, to preserve his life. It was not for harm, although in his eyes great harm was done.
Now I am an imperfect created being, and I have made, do make and will continue to make mistakes. My word picture therefore is inadequate in it's representation of God, but it at least helps to form a picture that might aid somewhat in our understanding of why bad things happen. Just like my son, laying on that table, screaming his outrage and his pain at the top of his lungs, did not understand, did not have all the pieces to the puzzle, could not comprehend at that time that what was taking place was for good in the end, sometimes we also cannot see. There will be times of great sorrow where we will live to actually see with our own eyes the reasons, and the good that came from them, there will be other times where we may not see it, we may have to wait until we stand before Him, and He shows us all that He did, all that He brought about, all that He prevented, by allowing the pain in our lives. What He asks us to do right now is to trust Him. His love for His children makes my love for my own children pale in comparison, for He is God, perfect in His love, while I am human and created and always imperfect in mine.
May God, today and in days to come, help us to see in the darkness, to open our eyes fully, to open our clenched fists completely and receive the abundant grace that He freely gives.
GRACE: unmerited, undeserved favor.
More information on the attributes of God:
http://www.josh.org/video-2/attributes-of-god/