Tracing God's hand

“Many are the plans of the Man’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails”- Proverbs 19:21

We learnt the meaning of this verse the hard way. When we found out we were having our son we made so many plans for him, what we would do, what his future prospects would be etc. We had also started planning and setting things aside for his 1st birthday.

Unfortunately, he was called home 8 short months after he was born. We realized then that although we had so many plans for him, for what we would do as a family, God is sovereign, and his purpose will always prevail.

It was a sobering experience for us to realize that God’s purpose for us may not always be as we expected, and it could be quite painful and heartbreaking. All we could do in the moment was pray for the strength to accept for his will for our lives, as painful as that may be.

We are however promised in Jeremiah 29:11 that his plans for us are to prosper us and not harm us to give us a future and a hope. We chose to stand firm in the belief that our God in all his sovereignty and wisdom is orchestrating things together for our good. He is indeed still God even in the Valley. Yes, we will always miss our son, but we know his death gives us more purpose to be intentional with our walk with God to enable us to meet him again when the time comes.

We may never understand God’s purpose and plans and why he allows us to go through trials and I don’t think we are ever meant to understand in the moment. I know that in hindsight looking back at this season we will see how he was piecing together the broken pieces to create a masterpiece.

I remember listening to a sermon where the preacher mentioned the words “Don’t try to make sense of it while you’re in it, you will only understand it in retrospect”. And I think many of us have that problem of trying to make sense of things in the moment. It is human nature to seek out answers. One verse of the bible that would give me comfort in moments when I tried to make sense of things is John 13:7 “You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand”. This indicates to us that we are not meant to understand it in the moment, all we need to do is trust that he is working it out for our good.

On this note I leave you with something I stumbled upon which reads “When I cannot trace the hand of God, I can always trust his heart”. I hope we can all find it in us to trust his heart.