David, in Psalm 139, makes the appropriate comment, "Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is too high, I cannot attain to it" (v. 6). If David lived today, he would write, "This blows my mind." The vastness of God's inscrutability has a way of doing that to us—and so it should.
If nothing else, the study of Job reveals that we don't fully understand God's ways. We cannot explain the inexplicable. We cannot fathom the unfathomable. So let's not try to unscrew the inscrutable.
If only the men who considered themselves Job's friends had acknowledged that. It would have been so much more comforting to Job, sitting in such enormous misery, longing for an arm around his shoulder and someone honest enough to say, "We're here, but we don't understand why this is happening any more than you do. God knows, but we're here to be with you through it. God is doing something deep and mysterious, but it is so beyond us we cannot understand it either."
May I go one step further? God doesn't have a "wonderful plan" for everybody's life. Not here on earth, for sure. For some lives His plan is Lou Gehrig's disease. For some lives (like Job's) His plan is a life of pain. For others, heartbreak and brokenness, blindness or paralysis, or congenital complications. For many, His plan is to answer no to their requests for healing. But we don't like that. Some won't accept it. In fact, they go so far as to say, "If you believe that, you lack faith." On the contrary, I say if you believe that, you believe the Bible!
The Bible describes the lives of people who don't get well, who don't quickly get over their problems, who don't easily overcome accidents or illnesses. God's Word pictures its heroes, warts and all. They hurt. They fall. They fail, and on occasion, by His grace, they succeed.
How well do you accept the unfolding plan of God for your life?
Taken from Great Days with the Great Lives by Charles Swindoll. Copyright © 2005 by Charles R. Swindoll. Used by permission of HarperCollins Christian Publishing. www.harpercollinschristian.com
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