The Lord is awe-inspiring, fearsome, fascinating, intriguing, majestic, and full of splendor: breathtaking! Here is what I saw of him in Ecclesiastes 11:3,
"If clouds are full of water, they pour rain upon the earth. Whether a tree falls to the south or to the north, in the place where it falls, there will it lie."
This verse strikes me from the perspective of whatever it is, it is what it is. If something is going to happen, it is going to happen the way it will. "Whether a tree falls to the south or to the north, in the place where it falls, there will it lie."
Is this the only perspective? Life viewed from the perspective of "life under the sun", the perspective Solomon speaks to in this short book, it seems so. It could lead to a somewhat fatalistic outlook on what we can expect in life. There is no control, no appeal, no alternative to what happens. "It is what it is." "What will be will be."
However, as we learn about God, there is an entirely different perspective. Reality is not just what we know from "life under the sun". Reality is much, much bigger. What we see, what we know, what we sense and perceive is only a fraction of all of reality. The existence of the spiritual realm is a universe of teeming reality, of which this life is just a fraction. The Scriptures are full of information about that which lays beyond "life under the sun". From them we learn much. The One who designed this world and how it works, the One who established the laws of physics that governs it, the One who knows the hearts of all mankind and what our proclivities are, he is One who has great intelligence. He has very full and pervasive emotions. He has a will of his own and he responds to the events in our world in real time. He also answers prayer...
Although some folks struggle with the concept of God's sovereignty, a full and mature view of how God has revealed himself in the Scriptures acknowledges that our totally sovereign God responds to the wills of his creatures in his own way - and he isn't going to check in with me first. Listen to what he tells us. "If at any time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down and destroyed, and if that nation I warned repents of its evil, then I will relent and not inflict on it the disaster I had planned. And if at another time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be built up and planted, and if it does evil in my sight and does not obey me, then I will reconsider the good I had intended to do for it." Jeremiah 18:7-10.
The most wonderful acknowledgment of this can be found in the teaching of Jesus on prayer, "Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. He said: 'In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared about men. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, "Grant me justice against my adversary." For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, "Even though I don't fear God or care about men, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won't eventually wear me out with her coming!"' And the Lord said, 'Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly.'" Luke 18:1-8a.
God does answer prayer! He responds to the pleas of his children and if he chooses to do so, he will intervene in the affairs of this world and bring about that which would not have otherwise happened. "It is what it is" is not always necessarily true, and when it comes to prayer, it just may be that where a tree falls, there it may not lie!
Anything of the Lord capture your heart from Scripture today? Share your thoughts of worship with us from your Bible reading today. We'd love to hear from you!
Trevor Fisk
trevor.fisk@gmail.com
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