On her daily devotional, Elisabeth Elliot described the situation of a mother of seven children ages 15 to a toddler, trying to load her children into a van on Sunday morning after her pastor husband had left the house much earlier. You can imagine the state of so many children at different ages and needs. Elliot summed it up with these words, "As Baron Von Hagel said, 'The chain of cause and effect which makes up human life, is bisected at every point by a vertical line relating us and all we do to God.' This is what He has given us to do, this task here on earth, not the task we aspired to do, but this one. The absurdities involved cut us down to size. The great discrepancy between what we envisioned to do and what we've got force us to be real. And God is our great Reality, more real than the realest of earthly conditions, an unchanging Reality. It is His providence that has put us where we are. It's where we belong. It is for us to receive it-all of it-humbly, quietly, thankfully."
A good reminder for those times when things don't go quite how we planned...when children wake up sick (again!), messes are unexpectedly made and remade before us, relationships don't go like we wanted them to, phone calls come that seem to stop of all of life and take our breath away. God is the great Reality. His providence put us here. Look to Him in these moments.
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