God works in mysterious ways

Today was an average day, spent waiting for things to do. Things look to be speeding up soon, at long last, with some additional management being brought on to help things along.

Some friends are good because they shed light on an aspect of a dilemma that you hadn't considered. Some friends are good because they tell you what you knew already but needed to head again. Some friends are good because they smack you around with something you should have known but didn't want to admit. I guess I got a little of all of them tonight, in regard to a quandary that has been put to me of late. Somehow I think that prayer and a little prudent sense will avail me more than advice, but advice is a good thing none the less.

God works in mysterious ways. It's a phrase so oft quoted that it's nearly a cliche, and yet it's real meaning is lost on most of those who would use it to bolster their faith. Sadly, it is often used to explain the operation of providence bringing something into our lives; surely there must be some deeper purpose in some painful or otherwise unwanted thing being in my life. It's used as a way to make sense of things, to fit circumstances that contradict our chosen plans into place. In fact, this line of reasoning is completely self-focused, as if to bend God's manifested means into my plans.

God doesn't follow our rules, either in His chosen means or His chosen ends. The truism that God works in mysterious ways can only be properly understood when we abandon the foolish notion what we know what's best for us. God's ends are as mysterious as his means. Yet His works are as much present in our reactions as they are in the circumstances that educe them, because He knows us better than we know ourselves. It's so easy to fall into the "God brought such and such into my life, so He must be wanting thus and such for me. Such an attitude is the very opposite of faith, which is the hope of things not seen.

God, give me the ability to look past my own desires and, more importantly, my seemingly providential circumstances, to follow in faith without reading my own wants into Your will.