The Dark Threads
Genesis 50:20 It is true that you planned to do something bad to me. But really, God was planning good things. God’s plan was to use me to save the lives of many people. And that is what happened.
One of the most perplexing questions in life is ‘why do bad things happen to good people?’ It’s even harder for someone of faith, because to that we add a second question. God, what are you doing?
I received a letter from a man a little while back who’d suffered a stroke seven years earlier. He’d lost his sense of taste and his ability to speak and to top it all off, he’d also been deaf ever since. He wrote, “I don’t know why God hasn’t given me back my hearing.”
That sort of thing that makes your heart ache. What the heck is God up to?! Why doesn’t He do something? As I prayed for this man, an old poem came to mind. It’s called “The Weaver” and it goes something like this:
My life is but a weaving between my Lord and me.
I cannot choose the colours as He weaveth steadily.
Sometimes He chooses dark threads and I in foolish pride,
Forget He sees the upper and I the underside.
Not till the loom is silent and the shuttles cease to fly,
Shall God unroll the canvass and explain the reason why
The dark threads are as needful in the Weaver’s skilful hand,
As the threads of Gold and Silver, in the pattern He has planned.
Why do bad things happen to good people? The answer’s not always obvious. But Joseph back in the Old Testament, who’d suffered so many injustices at the hands of his brothers, when all was said and done, came to this conclusion:
Genesis 50:20 It is true that you planned to do something bad to me. But really, God was planning good things. God’s plan was to use me to save the lives of many people. And that is what happened.
Whatever happens, trust Him.
That’s God’s Word. Fresh … for you … today.
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