God of Anyone

There are persons from my past that I struggle to understand how they can live the lives they're living right now. Lives that look good, at least from the outside. Jobs with good pay. Families with smiles on their faces. Houses with manicured lawns. Like...don't you remember what a horrible person you were? 

There are persons that I look at today and wonder why their lives aren't better than they are. Persons who are kind, decent, hard-working persons. Persons who have fought for everything they have and then, often, given that everything away. Persons who love deeply, judge rarely, and spread kindness through the world. 

There are persons that I grieve because they seem to have thrown so much away. Made some bad choices. Made some wrong choices. Done some things that have done more harm than good, but I understand how it happens. I know enough of their story to recognize how the world set them back, how the world got set against them. How sometimes, the world even managed to set them against themselves. 

I have a knack for reading more deeply into others than most of the world does. It's a gift that only became sharper during my time as a chaplain. God just gives me a sense for these things. 

And I have prayed many a prayer for these persons. 

All of them. 

And I don't know why it is that God answers some prayers and not others. I don't know why He heals some broken persons and not others. I don't know why some folks get to taste their redemption on this side of heaven and others have to simply wait with confident assurance. If there is a rhyme or a reason to it, it's not one that I recognize. 

What I do know is that that's not my problem. Those aren't my questions to answer. God never asks us to explain Him to others; He tells us to tell them about Him. About His goodness, about His mercy, about His love. 

And as we have all known because we have lived it, part of what we know about Him is that He can (and does) give everything to anyone He wants. (Jeremiah 27:5)

To the CEO in the corner office. To the stay-at-home mom. To the addict on the corner. To the cancer patient in curtain 13 (but not the one in curtain 11). To the little boy with no friends. To the little girl who is the life of the party. To the one who has taken a wrong turn. To the one walking so narrow a path they didn't even realize turns were an option. To the tempted. To the tempter. To the mature. To the young. To the struggling. To the thriving. 

To anyone He wants. Whether we, in our finite human minds, understand it or agree with it or rejoice in it or not. 

Actually, that's how I got here. I'm guessing probably you, too. 

And part of being a person of faith is not just learning to accept that, but to recognize that whatever God gives and to whomever He gives it serves to increase His glory in some meaningful way. That is, I don't have to understand it. I don't have to be able to defend it. But I do have to recognize that when I see someone blessed, that alone has something to teach me about God - has something to teach the world about God - that we might not have known otherwise. 

So rejoice! The Lord is good...to anyone He chooses. 

Even a wretch like me.