This has been perhaps the toughest few days I have been through for a long time. From seeing injustice; to seeing blatant disregard to instructions given; to seeing work not done for weeks; last minute rush job a mess (all rush jobs are) - it’s been tough. The irony is - my first prayer meeting message last Sunday was - what if you do not get what you want? How will you respond? I really had to bite the bullet this week. All the good things that happened this week, take a back seat to the looming shadow of what went wrong. I did not get what I want, and what I wanted was best for people. Zero to do with me. Zero. I wanted the best for others. And it didn’t come out as I planned it would. Where do you draw the line and say “it’s God’s plan” when you know it is incompetency, and God uses incompetency to get his plan done, instead of using the good advice, which was not his plan - in fact, he frustrates good advice 2 Sam 17: 14. And this was to effect a disaster in a person. It was between Absalom and Ahithophel - but the good advice was frustrated to destroy Absalom. Ahithophel was so upset, he went and killed himself. It is really difficult to know you are right, and in the end, it was both parties who were destroyed, because bad advice was what God wanted given. This is very difficult to wrap our mind around. Very. It was all a plan 2 Sam 15:34 - here from David and later from the LORD. I try to think how bad decisions, can work out for good - and yes, I can see some good from them, I can, but ultimately what sticks in my mind is the bad decisions and their negative effects, rather than the bad decisions and their good effects - as per Lk 16: 8 a commended shrewd manager. But he had a goal in mind. To deceive. I don’t think many decisions have at their root cause, to deceive; not at all. Yet, the wrong, bad, lazy decisions, win the day. That, I cannot grasp. It is as if the LORD says - do your best at all you do, but I will use the worst decisions/tasks anyway. So why struggle to do your very, very best (a bit of Jonah here), and the LORD decides to use not your mind, but the mind of people who cannot see what they are doing. Disheartening? Yes. Confusing? Yes. Encouraging? No. Scripture has so many applications, in so many different situations in life. Ultimately, after Job ranting and raving privately, there is only Job 42:2 no plan of God can be thwarted; :3b I spoke of things I did not understand. It’s tough.
MCC Admin
27 Kislev 5781