Sustaining Grace

The sky was the table and somebody had spilled milk across it. The bright fullness of the moon lit up a streak of white clouds against a dark blue sky. I sat in my car and admired the view. If God could order that then certainly He could order my little universe.

The wife and I are processing the way that God orders our lives. Going through a rough patch some weeks ago we were led to John Piper’s sermon on “sustaining grace.” The takeaway is that God allows distress but orders it that He might get the glory;

“Not grace to bar what is not bliss, nor flight from all distress but this,The grace to order our troubles and pain, And then in the darkness is there to sustain.”

God allows and orders all my circumstances. This is a biblical world view that I wish I’d understood much earlier. . He is still sovereign and in His omniscience fits together all the workings of my frail life into the plan of the universe. This doesn’t make it understandable to me but it does make it bearable; “It is He who sits above the circle of the earth, And its inhabitants are like grasshoppers…Lift up your eyes on high and see who has created these stars, The One who leads forth their host by number, He calls them all by name, Because of the greatness of His might and the strength of His power, Not one of them is missing.”

The hand of fate will spill milk on my table—that’s a given. Some seasons the spill is larger than I can handle; more oil spill than milk spill. The one who knows the stars by name has already placed the cleanup crew in place. In the darkness, in the process, He sustains and holds together til I reach that vantage point where I can appreciate His handiwork