God in All Things

Excerpt taken from Trusting God in All Things: 90 Devotions for Finding Peace in Your Every Day by Karen Ehman & Ruth Schwenk

In almost every season of life, there are situations lurking on the horizon about which we aren’t exactly sure just what we can expect. When I was a teenager, I often thought about what life would be like after high school. I knew I wanted to go to college, but I wasn’t sure if my single mom would be able to financially swing it. I also pondered what my future would bring as far as a career; my interests were all over the map. I toggled between wanting to be a pharmacist, a television news reporter, or a high school history teacher.

Once I was in college, my thoughts turned to life after graduation. Would I stay in the Midwest? Move to another area of the country? Would I be traversing life solo, or would a man come along who would someday be my husband? And then, once I was married, I wondered about things like children and moves, aging parents and forging lifetime friendships. There have also been concerning times of financial stress and medical test results.

Throughout all of it—although in my heart and mind I knew God was in control—something within me wanted to know exactly what I could expect next. Ever the planner and color-coded schedule maker, I yearned to know the steps that lay ahead long before I ever needed to take them.

Looking back now at over four decades of life, I can see that sometimes things turned out much as I expected. Other times, the exact opposite occurred. Things I’d vowed would never happen—like being a June bride and having three kids (I wanted to avoid the dreaded stereotypical oldest, middle, youngest child syndrome)—were exactly what did transpire. But here is the one thing that I can say was consistent: God always planned good for me, even though there were instances in which I didn’t realize it at the time. Later on—peering in hindsight— these situations made sense.

Psalm 145:9 asserts, “The Lord is good to all, and His tender mercies are over all His works.” I just love the definition of the Hebrew word racham, translated in this verse as tender mercies. Racham means foremost having a deep and intense compassion and showing infinite and absolute love. And when we read that “the Lord is good to all,” guess what the word all is in the Hebrew? Kol, and it means all. All means all! And that includes you.

At those times when we don’t know what to expect from life, the one great expectation we can surely possess is that God is full of tender mercy. His compassion is deep, His kindness, intense. In His wisdom He allows our life situations to materialize only after being run through a grid of His infinite and absolute love for us.

What can you and I expect in the future? Neither of us knows. But we can know with certainty that the Lord is good. He is good to us. His mercies won’t ever come to an end (Lamentations 3:22).

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Excerpt from Trusting God in All the Things by Karen Ehman and Ruth Schwenk, provided by Bethany House, a division of Baker Publishing Group. Copyright 2022. Used by permission.

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