Patience and Surprise

Let’s pause on the politics and news today. We are a week from Christmas.

I want to reiterate that, though you may not know it, God has a plan for you. Often, it takes patience to see.

Today is my wife’s birthday.

Eight years ago, my wife was given two years to live. Eighteen years ago, in a few days, I had to look my wife in the eyes and tell her I’d lost my job. A few hours after looking her in her eyes to tell her I’d lost my job, I had to look into her eyes and tell her she had six months to live.

Eighteen years ago, I lost my job and found out my wife had six months to live, all on the same day. We had a one-year-old, a mortgage, and student loans, and I was about to be a widower and single parent.

Thankfully, the doctors misdiagnosed my wife. The day after the diagnosis, the doctors told us they were sending her lung biopsy to the Mayo Clinic because they were no longer convinced she had cancer. Within a day, a company bought my company, and I kept my job.

Eight years ago, ten years after that misdiagnosis, a doctor at the Mayo Clinic told my wife she had a genetic form of lung cancer. Had my wife not been misdiagnosed that fatal Christmas ten years before, we’d have never caught her cancer until it was too late.

Providentially, the doctor best equipped to deal with her cancer and the man who helped develop the medicine she takes is right up the road from us in Atlanta.

Sometimes, life is like a roller coaster ride, but God has a plan. It may not be your plan, and it may not work out the way you want it. Your loved ones might not be spared like my wife. But all things work for the good of those called according to His purpose, even when we can’t see it.

Around four thousand years ago, Abraham cut a bunch of animals in half and walked between them to make a covenant with God Almighty Himself.

12 As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell on Abram. And behold, dreadful and great darkness fell upon him. 13 Then the Lord said to Abram, “Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years. 14 But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions. 15 As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried in a good old age. 16 And they shall come back here in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.” 17 When the sun had gone down and it was dark, behold, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. 18 On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your offspring I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates, 19 the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, 20 the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, 21 the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites and the Jebusites.”

Genesis 15:12-21 (ESV).

Abraham should have, as the lesser of the two, walked between the pieces of the animals he had cut up as a sign that, should he break the covenant, he would die.

Instead, God put Abraham to sleep and walked between the pieces Himself to signify that if Abraham broke the covenant, God Himself would die.

God made the covenant with Abraham and showed He would fulfill the covenant. In that plan, God even noted that Abraham’s descendants would have to wait as sojourners in a land for four hundred years. He knew it then.

Two thousand years later, God came to earth as a baby born in a manger, fleeing death into Egypt, returning to Nazareth, then bound for Jerusalem, an innocent man destined for a criminal’s death.

Before the foundation of the world began, God had a plan. It’s not a plan without suffering, including His own. It is not a plan without misery, including His own. It is not a plan we can discern with clarity now. But it is there.

Eighteen years ago, I looked my wife in the eyes to tell her I’d lost my job and then that she would die. My job then was as a blogger. Now I’m on the radio. And she did not die that day and today we’ll cut some cake, open some presents, and take her to dinner.

I don’t know what God has in store for us, but I know he knows already, and nothing will separate me from Him and His wonders and glory. When the headlines overwhelm you, and life drives you to despair, I’ve been there. And trust me, God has a plan. You will be fine.