Pondering providence

I got up early this morning keen to get out of the house, on the road and into the office to start work.

Tea made, lunches prepared for daughters, dog fed, Bible read. So far so good.

Then it started to go wrong.

The delivery man with the weeks' shop was late. I would normally set my watch by him at 7am on the dot. But today no explosion of barking from dog at the expected moment. Just silence. When he arrives with apologies, it all takes too long to sort out.

Usual chaos of shouting, calling and snarling - raising slumbering daughters from the comforting warmth of bed into the cold routines of another school morning. Finally sorted, I run downstairs to exit, later than I wanted. Glasses fly from my pocket on the stairs. A sound as they land somewhere.

But where? I checked every conceivable place - on the stairs, under the stairs, by the stairs. But they had disappeared completely. Eventually give up. Exasperated. More minutes wasted rummaging around for spare pair before finally emerging into the snow flurries of a freezing morning. And so on the road - at last.

It's a morning like any morning for many people. Filled with minor frustrations and the random happenings of life. Random, except if you are a believer in a Sovereign God, who holds all things in his hand.

Bible-believing Christians reject a view of God as being distant from the world he made. And we reject too the dualist approach to life which would have me rebuking the devil for hiding my spectacles, and only rejoicing in the goodness of God when the traffic lights are green for us. We embrace the view that our God is intimately involved with everything that goes on in the universe, and that the events of this morning are a part of the way he has ordered my life today.

But what am I to make of it? What is my response to these providential circumstances of life I find myself wading through, treacle-like.

Can I suggest two?

What is God doing?

Romans 8:28 tells us that God has made everything work together for the good of those who are called to belong to Christ Jesus. This verse is often smilingly quoted when something brilliant has happened. I got the job. I passed the exam. I escaped unhurt.

But God's goodness is in all things. When I fail the exam; when I don't get the job; when I am injured and wounded. God is working for my good too. However hard and "bad" the things are that are happening to me - God is at work in them to bring glory to himself, and my ultimate good - to make me more like Jesus, and bring me home to him forever. Our response in whatever circumstances must be to be thankful.

How is he doing it?

But we don't always see how he is doing it. If I had set off earlier - would I have been involved in a fatal car crash? If I now stay later, will I do something really significant and important to further the work of the gospel that I would not otherwise have done? I simply do not know the answers to these questions. But the point that Paul makes in Romans 8 is that we can trust that God is working for his glory and my good because of the cross. Because God did the really big thing in sending his son to die for me when I was his enemy - I can trust him in whatever my circumstances are now. Be that the frustrations of a messed up morning, or the loss of a friend or a debilitating illness. My response must be to trust him.

There were no obvious pile-ups I missed on the journey into work. I will perhaps never know how life would have been different if I had set off 30 minutes earlier. And maybe that's the wrong way to think. But this has been what today is like as I walk in the providential care of a Good God who holds me in his hands.

At work. Thankful. Trusting.