I woke up this morning. So did my husband, all four of my children, and even the dog. So far, that has happened each morning since each of us was born. Amazing, isn't it? And yet, how often does that fact even occur to me? How often am I truly thankful for the simple gifts of life and health and peace? How often am I even aware that I have them, rather than only being aware of all the trials in my life?
Our youngest son is a means God is using to teach me to be more aware of His daily care for us and to be more thankful that He continues to preserve us.
When our son was born after a very healthy pregnancy and normal delivery, the cord was wrapped around his neck and he stopped breathing. He was plopped on my lap for all of five seconds and then briskly swiped away to the resuscitation table, as the midwife realized that he hadn't recovered from the trauma. She was able to get him breathing again, and he's been an energizer bunny of a boy ever since. But in the probably only 2 minutes that felt like an eternity while she worked on him with the oxygen pump, Nathan and I faced the very real possibility that modern medicine might fail and our newborn son might die before we'd even really had a good look at him. What a relief when he let out a hearty cry and was restored to my arms! God preserved his life that day, and we were well aware of it.
A few years later, our basement flooded in the middle of the night. We were alerted to this by our older son who had gotten up to use the washroom, and had climbed down off his bed into a few inches of water (the kids all sleep in the basement). After getting everybody up and dealing with the immediate tasks needed to bring down the water level, we began the work of drying everything out, including our younger son's mattress, which had been on the floor, as he had just recently moved out of the crib. It was at that point that we realized that if the water had risen only another couple inches, his mattress would have been submerged, and he might not have woken up that day. God had preserved his life again, and we were again well aware of it.
Last week at the library, this same little boy wandered away, and by the time I realized he was gone, his search for me had taken him outside into the parking lot. He was noticed, and I was called to collect him at the front desk, but that could have ended very badly. Thankfully, he was under God's watchful eye, even when he had escaped mine, and God preserved him.
But that boy is a risk taker, and it is not unlikely that each and every day of his life, God has kept him from some fatal danger that we weren't even aware of!
We are so quick to grieve when God takes something precious away from us. We don't often restrain ourselves from complaint when God brings adverse circumstances into our day. We are anxious about whether our kids will die of SIDS, or by being hit by a car, or by falling down the stairs, or by drowning, and we are so slow to entrust them and their lives to our Father in Heaven. And yet, how many times has He already spared them, unbeknownst to us? How many times has He kept us from the likely results of our own foolishness? How many times has Satan asked to sift us like wheat, and God has replied, "No, not this time"? How many times has God stayed His hand, and restrained wrath? How many times have we been given life when we deserved death?
We've had tragedy in our lives. We've had two children that we never had the chance to meet, due to miscarriage. We've experienced health emergencies, deaths among our extended family and friends, serious financial loss, the consequences of divorce and more. But if I spend more time asking "Why?" about these sad circumstances than I do praising God for all the times those things could have happened and didn't, my vision is skewed.
We often hear the question, "If God is so good (and so powerful), why does He allow suffering?" Allow me to turn the question on its head: If God is not good (and all powerful), why does He so often hold the suffering back? If God were not in control, how much more often would our lives fall apart? How much more often would we be under the vicious attacks of the devil? How many more days would there be when someone didn't wake up?
"Though I walk in the midst of trouble, you preserve my life; you stretch out your hand against the wrath of my enemies, and your right hand delivers me. The LORD will fulfill his purpose for me; your steadfast love, O LORD, endures forever." (Psalm 138:7-8a)
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