I was not, as a kid, a particularly gifted athlete. I enjoyed sports, however, and so my hours were determined by the seasons: football, basketball, baseball. I realized early on that my gifts were limited, while my desire to compete was boundless. My solution- will. I determined to will myself to victory, to be the dog in the fight with the most fight in the dog. The Rocky movies resonated with me. I would take a punch, and come back for more.
That same perspective survived my childhood, and is still with me. But it has matured. I went against Goliaths on the gridiron, faced Apollyon staring me down from the pitcher’s mound, but before the hand of God I have been humbled. My will wilts before His. As one wise theologian has been wont to say, “You have free will. God has free will. Whose will is more free?”
God’s revealed will is found for us in the Bible. He commands, and we are to obey. He forbids, and we are to abstain. His hidden will, however, is unhidden through circumstance. He not only commands what He will, but brings to pass what He will. Pharaoh’s army defied God’s revealed will in chasing after God’s people. But the tumbling walls of the Red Sea defied Pharaoh’s defiance. God won.
He always wins. When the Son of Glory hung in shame upon the cross, He won, just as much as He won when the Son walked into a garden, the firstborn of the new creation. When circumstances are not going the way we wish, when providence frowns upon us, there is no shadow on Him. Not because He is disconnected, not even because the light will defeat the darkness, but because these are His ordained means.
History, whether as narrowly conceived as how my day is going, or as broadly considered as the rise and fall of nations through all time, is God ultimately moving all the pieces on the chessboard. How such relates to evil is a great mystery. We must never besmirch His character. Neither, however, may we negotiate away His ultimate, absolute control over all things.
We are called to pray both as Jesus taught us, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done” which reminds us of our duty to submit to His revealed will, but also as Jesus prayed, “Nevertheless, not My will but Thine be done.” It is here that we remember and rest in His sovereignty, remembering that nothing comes to pass that He does not ordain (Lamentations 3:37).
God brought famine in the land, and Elimelech fled to Moab. Elimelech and his sons went the way of all flesh, leaving behind three widows. Dark providences indeed. But Boaz spied the young woman as she gleaned. But Boaz awoke from his slumber on the threshing room floor. But Boaz and Ruth begat a son, who begat a son who begat a son, whose “son” and Lord would be both the Son of David, and the Son of God. Do not lose heart in the dark providences. He brought us from death to life. He will do the same with our lives, in His timing.