The Big Picture

This mornings Streams In The Desert began with this sentence, "It had pleased God to remove my youngest child under circumstances of peculiar trial and pain." I had to stop and reread that statement. That can't be what the author meant to say. How could it possibly please God to take away someone's child? I finished reading the days devotional but it did not answer my question to my satisfaction. It talked about God's grace being sufficient. It talked about believing in God's promises as fact, not just words to merely 'hope' on. But that opening sentence still disturbed me. I thought about my own child. What if it pleases God to take him? What would I do? How would I react?

And then, it came to me. It does not please God to see us suffer. God's own word says that it is never His intent to harm us. It is always His plan to give us hope and a future. God sees the big picture. He can see backwards and forwards. Left and right. Around corners and down corridors and behind closed doors. He can see beneath us and above us and through us. He knows what we need, when we need it. And so, He is pleased with His plan for our lives. He understands our pain and our suffering but He sees past it to the fruits it will yield. He saw past the death of that child to the lives that would be forever changed because of the steadfast faithfulness of the grieving father. He even saw as far ahead as today and new that my life would be touched and that my spirit would be encouraged. He knew that I would be challenged to trust in Him implicitly to take care of my future, because of that man's testimony. And so, it pleased God for He saw the big picture. And I will never be the same.