A Blessing in Disguise — Morning Devotions

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And do you know it was a blessing in disguise because the guards would not come near their hut, and that group of women were left in peace for a while. The fleas were God’s answer to their imprisonment, a blessing in disguise.

Seeing the goodness in bad situations

For example, think of a person who has lost the job. At first they feel devastated, worried about the future. However, this situation may ultimately lead to new opportunities that they hadn’t explored, such as starting their own business or pursuing a different career path. In this case, losing their job was a blessing in disguise, and it opened up new doors for them that they might not have considered otherwise. Life doesn’t always unfold according to our plans, and sometimes doors that we desperately want to open stubbornly shut.

The book of Proverbs in the Old Testament gives some wisdom in Proverbs 19:21. Many are the plans of a man, but the purpose of the Lord will prevail. A closed door can be a divine redirection or a nudge towards a path that we haven’t considered, and I think we’ve forgotten that there are lessons to be learned every day. All we have to do is look out for them. I referred a moment ago to the concentration camp at Ravensbrück.

It was Victor Frankel himself a prisoner of war, who wrote the book Man’s Search for Meaning, which was a bestseller at the time. Prisoners were all in the same terrible situation. Would they live or die? And those who tried to get some meaning to their imprisonment survived, and Victor Frankel wrote about that in the Bible, in Genesis we see Joseph, who is a prime example. He was sold into slavery by his brothers, he endured years of hardship, and yet God’s hand is evident throughout his trials, ultimately positioning him to become the viceroy of Egypt and to save his family from famine. You can read that in Genesis 37 to 50. So what seemed like a devastating setback became a stepping stone to a much greater purpose. God is with you through every moment of life, and He will direct your path, even if the blessings are in disguise.

Take time to thank Him, praise Him for always being with you, and to look for the unexpected blessings and the blessings in disguise. Our limitations are not God’s limitations, and what seems impossible to us is possible for Him. When we surrender to His will, even the most impossible dreams can blossom into reality. The Bible says with God all things are possible. You might be facing a terrible burden at this stage in your life. You may have prayed many times for an answer, yet no answer comes. And Graham Lotts, who is the daughter of the evangelist Billy Graham, said if God can bring blessing from the broken body of Jesus and glory from something that’s as obscene as the cross, He can bring blessing from my problems and my pain and my unanswered prayer.

You might think that your prayers were all delayed, but sometimes God doesn’t give us the blessings exactly how we want them to be received. His blessing comes in different ways most of the time, and they come in simple and ordinary ways. And we, unfortunately, tend to miss the blessings because we’re expecting something different. So you need to ask God if the thing that you prayed for is good for you or not. Listen to his voice, for he knows better than you.

It was the Christian singer Laura Story who put these words to song. We pray for blessings. We pray for peace, comfort for family, protection while we sleep. We pray for healing, for prosperity. We pray for your mighty hand to ease our suffering. All the while you hear each spoken need, yet love is way too much to give us lesser things, cause what if your blessings come through raindrops? What if your healing comes through tears? What if 1000 sleepless nights are what it takes to know you’re near? And what if trials of this life are your mercies in.

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Let’s Pray

Heavenly Father, how often have I not seen the blessing that’s come? I’ve been resentful of what you’ve done, and yet, as I look back, many of these things are blessings in disguise. Give me the maturity, Lord, in my Christian faith to understand the good and the bad that comes and to see the way that you can weave all these things into the fabric of my life, and I want to be thankful every day in Jesus’ name. Amen.