Twenty years ago I read a book called Trusting God by Jerry Bridges. As I remember it, the book was an exhaustive Biblical defense of the belief that God was in control of everything. Not just large cosmic events. Not just sweeping historic storylines, but everything that happens to each individual person.
At the time that I read the book, I hadn't really wrestled with this concept. I had just coasted on it since my life had been relatively free from suffering. Subconsciously I guess I would give God credit for the "good" stuff and just chalk the rest of it up to chaos. As they say, "[Stuff] happens." But that Summer some really bad stuff had suddenly come my way and seemingly obliterated all my future plans. As I wallowed in self-pity and confusion, God sent Jerry Bridges book along to remind me that what was happening to me wasn't just the chaos of an impersonal universe, but it was His plan to get me back where I needed to be.
At first I was resistant to the idea. After all, a lot of bad stuff happens to people. But as Mr. Bridges beat me into submission with one Bible passage after another, I finally had to come to grips with a new problem. This God I said I believed in was both the good cop and the bad cop. If God was responsible for the bad stuff too (especially the bad stuff that happened to me), could I still believe that He loved me and had my best interests at heart? It seemed to me that this was the real challenge of faith: not just to simply believe in God's existence, but to accept, trust and obey Him while He allows garbage to rain down on your head.
One of my favorite Bible passages along these lines is not some flowery Psalm or philosophical epistle, but a simple story from first Samuel chapter 9. In this story Saul's father loses his donkeys (chaotic), then Saul goes out to find them but can't (bad), and finally Saul's servant suggests that they spend their last thin quarter of a shekel in a desperate bid to ask Samuel for some advice (worse). Then in verses 15 and 16 God pulls back the curtain to allow us to see that He was the one behind the chaos and badness.
"Now a day before Saul's coming, the LORD had revealed this to Samuel saying, 'About this time tomorrow I will send you a man from the land of Benjamin, and you shall anoint him to be prince over My people Israel; and he will deliver My people from the hand of the Philistines For I have regarded My people, because their cry has come to Me.'" - 1 Samuel 9:15-16 NASB
God could have appeared to Saul in a vision and told him to go to the man of God, but He didn't. He could have told Samuel to go find Saul, but He didn't. Instead, he used some lost donkeys. Frustrating? Most definitely. Inefficient? Seems that way. I could speculate and theorize about the why God did it this way, but the truth is that I will never know and likely not even understand His reasoning. Maybe lost donkeys are just His style. What I do know is that God doesn't change, and he is still using everyday things like lost donkeys to move people where he wants them. So the next time you've lost your car keys or your way or are frustrated by life's seeming chaos, just remember that God uses little everyday things to get us where He wants us to be. And being where God wants you is a very good thing. Think of Saul's lost donkeys when you're in the midst of the chaos, and just maybe you can keep from looking like a lost donkey yourself.
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