Reminders: The Way It Was Supposed to Be

A young Christian man was working for a large corporation where he saw some very unscrupulous behavior.  He didn’t want to be a part of it!  He quit his job, withdrew his savings and moved back to his hometown.  After he had been there a while, looking for a new job, he found out that his widowed mother was dying.  He suddenly realized that he was free to take care of her.  He had been so busy making a living that he had not spent much time with her in recent years.  He was grateful to have a chance to spend time with her before she passed away.  He was amazed that things had worked out so perfectly.  Was it coincidence or was it God’s plan all along?  It seems like it all happened, just the way it was supposed to.

How many times have things turned out differently than you had planned yet better than you could have imagined?  It’s hard to believe that God has time to get involved in the lives of ordinary individuals.  It seems reasonable that He would be much too busy with the big problems of the world to be concerned about the little problems we encounter in our daily lives.  Yet, we often find ourselves, seemingly by coincidence, in the right place at the right time.  After the occasion is over, we often think we have somehow, accidentally, done the right thing.  Actually, it might have been God’s plan from the beginning. 

There is an often quoted saying that captures this concept, “Coincidence is just God performing miracles and choosing to remain anonymous.”  Another saying reminds us that, “Our worst days are not beyond the reach of God’s grace, and our best days are not beyond the need of God’s grace.”

In other words, if we invite God into our lives, we should not be surprised if He is present when we need Him, even when we don’t realize what we need.  Let us thank God for what we have, and trust Him for what we need, even when we don’t know what those needs might be.  God said, "Behold, I am with you always, and will keep you wherever you go…” Numbers 6:24