Faith and Life: God's Doing, or Ours?

"And now do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life."  Genesis 45:5

I've always been intrigued by this statement which Joseph made to his brothers, who, years earlier, had been jealous of him and sold him as a slave to some people heading to Egypt.  Joseph sees how God was at work in everything that happened (and yes, some of it was really bad).  Even though there were visible, tangible causes of what happened to him, he recognized that it was really God's work all along.

This introduces one of those funny things in life.  We recognize that God has given us minds, and even in parts of His Word, tells us how to deal wisely with the things of this world.  He gives us great guidelines which can serve to help improve our lives, though we also must remember that this life, lived with sin in it, is not God's ultimate goal.  Because of that sin, it's now to re-create and make everything new.  But He does still care about what happens in this life and in what we make of it.

The thing is, it may seem like we are making our way along in life, sometimes with wisdom, and sometimes not.  But in the end, we're going to look back (like Joseph) and see that God's hand was at work in everything all along.  Some of it we'll be surprised at.  Other times, we'll recognize that God is at work at that particular time, and see it even more keenly afterward. 

We will always want to live our lives for ourselves.  That's part of that sinfulness that lives in us.  But the great thing is, even when we think we're doing it all on our own, God's hand is working unseen, and will probably become rather apparent later on.  Thanks be to God that He does this in our life!