not a chance

Yesterday morning I sat in a coffee shop and wrote of God’s goodness in all the details of life. I wrote: “Did God have a moment of inattention that led to whatever thing is hurting you today? Not a chance! I must insist that this, even this, is kind design. He is good, thoroughly and always; and He is no less good when the how is a mystery.”

Yesterday evening I heard my name screamed as I hope to never hear it again, and I fumbled trying to call 911 while my husband knelt beside our little boy, begging him to breathe.

And this, THIS is why I must insist that nothing escapes the Lord’s notice, that His kind design shapes our worst as well as our best days. Because when the worst days happen, I am not flailing about, informing a clueless deity that he must have missed something; I am calling out to a God who is perfect in knowledge, power, and goodness, who wrote all my days before my birth.

I don’t know all the processes in our boy’s body that triggered a febrile seizure, but I know the Lord who wrote each process — wrote them in designing human bodies in general to do certain things, yes, but also in specifically ordaining those processes one by one for our boy yesterday — and I know He is good. I’ll never know how high the fever was, not exactly how long the seizure lasted, but the Lord knew those details ahead of time. I can still feel the shock and terror coursing through my body, but the Lord was not taken by surprise.

And He allowed our baby to breathe. The Lord preserved his life. But even if He had not, and especially because I know that sometimes He does not, He is thoroughly and always good.

I want this truth tattooed on my soul, so that when it feels untrue, I won’t forget it.

God asserts Himself in scripture as the One who forms light and creates darkness, who makes well-being and creates calamity (Is. 45:7), He tells us that His steadfast love never ceases and His mercies never end (Lam. 3:22), that He is good and His steadfast love endures forever (Psalm 118:1), that nothing can separate us from His love in Christ Jesus our Lord (Rom. 8:39).

Learn these truths. Dwell in them, sing them, live them. He is sovereign; He is good. In His giving and His taking both, admonish your soul to bless His name.

Tonight I bless His name for a boy who has had breath to sing and talk and run and dance all day long.

©Stacy Crouch 2022