History

History isn’t fun for me when I have to memorize dates and write reports.  History is fun, though, when I get to hear the stories and to see God’s hand throughout time.  Today is Thanksgiving Day, and we in the United States typically associate this day with the story of the pilgrims who sailed to America and would have starved but for the indians who taught them how to survive, so that they reaped a successful harvest.

When I consider the differences between that time - nearly 400 years ago - and today, I am confronted by how things could have gone, and how God chose to orchestrate everything.  Everything He does is for a reason, and He doesn’t just sit idly by and watch our world like an ant farm.  He is active.

Consider a moment in your life that you tripped.  Did you trip because you were clumsy?  Did you, in fact, catch yourself?  What would have happened if you hadn’t tripped?  These questions may not always intrigue you, but I know it makes people think twice when they hear that a man escaped a bullet because he “happened” to trip at that moment.  Perhaps he barely caught himself to find that he might have fallen into the muck and ruined the suit he was wearing, which would have made him late to attend an important vote that might mean the end of human trafficking in his country.  And perhaps his is the vote that tips the scales.  

While this particular scenario may be a bit exaggerated (though I wouldn't put it past God), we have all heard stories of people narrowly escaping death because they tripped, or got sick and didn’t go to work that day, or got stuck in traffic (remember September 11, 2001).  We have also heard stories like someone ruining their clothes in a strange place, finding the love of their life at the store while buying new clothes, and deciding to live in that strange place, completely changing their plans for life.  God's plan didn't change.

God will use the fact that you "tripped" (or whatever may or  may not have happened) for His glory in some way.  Tripping is one tiny moment in your life... and God uses all of the moments of your life for His glory (whether you have the same aim or not).  

He doesn’t restrict this to your life, either.  He does this in every single life and in every single thing in the universe.  I cannot possibly fathom the Being who is able to orchestrate and keep track of that infinity and how each moment, person, and thing interrelates.

God works through the incredibly small things in our lives to direct the course of history.  I wonder at all of the little things that God orchestrated in the pilgrim’s lives to put them where they were for that Thanksgiving.  Imagine the sheer number of the little things that He has done in the lives of those in the world since then to bring us to where we are today.

You and I are precisely where God wants us to be.  And we always have been throughout history.  So I am thankful for history, and that it shows that God is God - and I am not.