Providence

Genesis 24:42-44, 50-51

42″I came today to the spring and said, ‘O LORD, the God of my master Abraham, if now you are prospering the way that I go, 43behold, I am standing by the spring of water. Let the virgin who comes out to draw water, to whom I shall say, “Please give me a little water from your jar to drink,” 44 and who will say to me, “Drink, and I will draw for your camels also,” let her be the woman whom the LORD has appointed for my master’s son.’

50Then Laban and Bethuel answered and said, “The thing has come from the LORD; we cannot speak to you bad or good. 51Behold, Rebekah is before you; take her and go, and let her be the wife of your master’s son, as the LORD has spoken.”

When Abraham’s servant told Rebekah’s brother Laban how the events took place that led him to see that Rebekah was the wife that God had chosen, Laban could not argue. It was obviously God at work.

It is not always  easy to interpret the work of God in our lives. But we can always be sure He is working.

Even when something is not what we want or is a transgression of the Scriptures, we do well to consider the providence of God at work in all our situations. The fact that God is at work even when the Scriptures are violated by others is a great consolation.

In Laban’s case, the confluence of events was so obviously a work of God that he could put forward no argument to prevent the servant from declaring that this woman was to be Isaac’s wife. Watch life with both eyes open. It is a blind person who fails to see the providence of God at work in the events of his life, whether those events be what he wants or not.

Joseph credited God for being at work through the evil of his brothers. “You meant it for evil, God meant it for Good”. Job saw the hand of God even in the tragedies he was enduring – “The Lord has given and the Lord has taken away”. Jesus spoke of God at work in the blindness of a man He was about to heal “This [blindness] happened so that the works of God might be glorified”.

Do not look for miracles. Look for providence. You will see God and that is a stunning sight.