I was deeply troubled and woke in the night to pace the floor and pray. Frankly, my attitude was not one of prayerful submission to God, but one of questioning and anger. Finding no release, I sat and stared out a large window at the night sky. I was unexpectedly drawn to focus on Orion’s Belt—those three perfectly arranged stars often visible on clear nights. I knew just enough about astronomy to understand that those three stars were hundreds of light years apart.
I realized the closer I could be to those stars, the less they would appear to be aligned. Yet from my distant perspective, they looked carefully configured in the heavens. At that moment, I realized I was too close to my life to see what God sees. In His big picture, everything is in perfect alignment.
The apostle Paul, as he completes a summary of the ultimate purposes of God, breaks into a hymn of praise (Romans 11:33–36). His words lift our gaze to our sovereign God, whose ways are beyond our limited ability to understand or trace (v. 33). Yet the One who holds all things together in the heavens and on earth is intimately and lovingly involved with every detail of our lives (Matthew 6:25–34; Colossians 1:16).
Even when things seem confusing, God’s divine plans are unfolding for our good and for God’s honor and glory.
INSIGHT
Paul wasn’t the first author in the Bible to speak of God’s inscrutability—that He’s beyond comprehension (Romans 11:33–36). Two thousand years earlier, Job (believed to have lived at about the time of Abraham) asked, “Can you fathom the mysteries of God? Can you probe the limits of the Almighty?” (Job 11:7). Isaiah also acknowledged that God is beyond human understanding (Isaiah 55:8–9). But God wanted us to know Him and said, “I will give them a heart to know me, that I am the