Can We Predict the...

To assume that we can predict the future and then believe that we can craft the present to fulfill that idealized assumption…is to ignore the clear and repeated examples of Scripture.
Bet you thought I was going to say…“future?” Well, I wasn’t. So, we’ve established that you can’t! I was going to say, “…how we might best be used to accomplish God’s will?” We can’t predict that either. We like to think we can peer past the present and foretell the impact of the circumstances at hand, but we’d be mostly wrong.
Nonetheless, humanity continues to limit its future potential by eliminating wrongly perceived threats to its ideal vision of what’s to come. For example, in our vast wisdom, our laws allow for the taking of an unborn child’s life. Most “sensible” pro-choice people see the bane of birth defects as a perfectly acceptable excuse for a mother choosing to terminate her pregnancy. Yet, our church recently hosted Nick Vujicic—a young man born without arms or legs. 26+ years ago, in Australia, his mother evidently didn’t have access to the hi-tech, inner-womb imaging tools we have today. The doctors totally missed the not-so-minor detail of Nick’s lack of limbs.
Today, the average expectant parent would have aborted a child like Nick for the general excuse: It’s best. It’s best not to have to deal with an extremely physically challenged child. It’s best for the child not to have to grow up that way. It’s best not to put the burden of yet another disabled person on society. Well, tell that to the 250,000 people now on a path to heaven, plus nearly 100 from our church (who made decisions for Christ that Sunday) because of Nick’s ministry. For those people, it’s best that Nick is here.
We are woefully bad at accurately deciding what reality in the future will be. In too many cases, it is one’s own life that he or she decides has no worthy future. Some become so hopeless that they wrongly convince themselves it would be best to end it all. I’m no prophet, but I can safely say they’re wrong. Where there’s life, there’s hope.
I don’t believe that anyone is here by mere coincidence. I believe God intends for each of us to have a purpose; to be a part of His plan. We all have a choice as to which side of His plan; His sovereign will, we will live on. The bleakest of circumstances can ultimately fulfill His plan. But, if we decide ahead of time that nothing good can come of such circumstances, we can end up aborting what could have been a good thing.
To assume that we can predict the future and then believe that we can craft the present—even if it means violating God’s commands—to fulfill that idealized assumption is to ignore the clear and repeated examples of Scripture.
One example is a young, beautiful girl who lost both of her parents. She would have been totally orphaned and quite possibly abandoned had her cousin not stepped in to raise her. She was part of a despised minority in her culture. Her presence in that place was the result of a mass kidnapping that had taken place over 70 years earlier. She may have been a native of Babylon or Persia, but her true homeland was Israel and most of her countrymen had returned there.
Does that sound like the makings of a queen? Would you peg that young lady as the courageous rescuer of her people? Human wisdom might have counseled God to go another direction. But we don’t get to counsel God and He uses whom He chooses to use; even if it’s someone like Esther. He chooses; even if it’s someone like you.

“Yet who knows whether you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” ─Esther 4:14b nkjv