"You have a 90% chance of getting past this with no further problems." Those words from my doctor were quite reassuring! I suddenly envisioned 100 sick people lined up in front of me, and then 90% of them getting up and moving back to their regular lives like nothing ever happened. It felt reassuring... until I realized there were still 10% of those sick people there, still having problems, and each of them had probably felt pretty good about their odds as well. It was a very shallow reassurance after that.
It was during a recent hospitalization that I desperately wrestled with odds, looking for that elusive peace about my situation. Needless to say, I didn't find it. Looking back, I realized that I'd never find peace among probabilities and statistics. Though I wasn't looking in the right place, the One Who Gives Peace redirected my efforts.
Did Christ give me a divine assurance that I would have a complete recovery? No. Did He whisper in my ear that things would improve? Not at all. He simply asked if I'd trust Him through this, one baby step at a time. Yes, I can do that.
In our ordeals, we are not simply thrown to the wolves of life, some of us victorious and some not. There's a perfect plan, tailored for each one of us with our ultimate victories in mind; this plan will include elation, devastation, and everything in between. And there are blessings in it all - and speaking from my own personal experiences, the blessings during the low points are far greater, richer, and deeper than they've been in the good times.
I'm not concerned with odds and probabilities at this point. In return for redirecting my trust from statistics to He Who Controls It All, I got peace. I don't need to know what's going to happen, how it's going to happen, or when it's going to happen, because I know He Who Has The Perfect Plan, and He will sustain me through it all, and use it to my good.
When the bottom falls out of life, there are three things of vital importance to remember:
1) God knows it all. He sees things you cannot. He's got the whole package of information about your trouble; you don't.
2) God is powerful enough to do anything. He doesn't play the odds - He makes the odds. And there is no situation in which He is helpless. If He doesn't wave His awesome hand and make your situation go away, there's a reason.
3) God loves us far more than we can understand or comprehend. Sometimes in looking back at our past troubles, we see how God's love was manifested in allowing those unpleasant circumstances; some times, we'll have to wait to see it. But His love is present through all of it.
Considering those three points together, when the Lord of All Life asks us to trust Him in our given situations, we have to have confidence that He knows what He's doing, and that He'll never ask us to walk through it alone.
