Life is Unpredictable — Morning Devotions

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Transcript

It is strange how life works—one day things are going ‘business as usual’ and then suddenly something out of the blue happens, and your world is turned upside down. And it usually happens when you least expect it. I’m sure it’s happened to you—you may say, it was meant to be or the stars must have been aligned for that to happen.

Sometimes we’re working so hard to get through whatever we must face; we can’t begin to process what is happening around us. We don’t have time to pause and think. We move forward, taking one day at a time. We just try to get through it.

The key to a happy life is to live in the present and start enhancing our prospective towards dealing with each and everything life offers to us. It has its ups and its downs, good days and bad days, and successes and failures. It holds all these things, some in the past and others for the future. It’s frustrating, I know—but life doesn’t work the way we think it will.

But I do have some good news for you. While life is often unpredictable, we have a loving God who will never change. God is in control whether you feel it be so or not. The Bible clearly states this to be a fact. Life is unpredictable.

There are countless things I can never know with certainty. What I can know, however, is that there is a God who knows all and loves me deeply.

And by knowing Him, I can ‘be still’—I can be at peace. I am not left to my own devices, to wander through each day without any assurance that He is not in charge of this crazy world.

He created the universe we live in, and as the old song says, “He has the whole world in His hands”. That includes you and me. The writer in the book of Ecclesiastes in the OT sums it up so well:

“The race does not always go to the swift; the battle is not always won by the strong; bread does not always fill the table of the wise; wealth does not always accrue to the skillful, and favour is not always granted to the knowledgeable; But time and misfortune happen to them all”. (v11).

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If you’re at a race, which runner do you think is going to win? The fast one, of course. But not always. In the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, American runner Lola Jones was expected to win the gold in hurdles. She was known to be the fastest in the world. But she tripped on the ninth hurdle and came in not first but seventh. The race is not to the swift. Life is unpredictable. Things don’t always turn out the way they should.

Who’s going to succeed in life? The Teacher in Ecclesiastes gives three types of people we think are going to do well: the wise, the intelligent, and the skillful. These are voted most likely to succeed in school. Everyone recognizes their talents. But go to a high school reunion years later, and who has actually made it? Not the people that you would have expected. Life is unpredictable.

You are not in control. We are not in control of our destinies. Accidents can cause us to fall short of our goal. Time and chance happen to everyone. Life is not only brief, but it’s unpredictable. Some people wrongly say, “Live a good life and all your dreams will come true”. Not so. I know of good people who have been taken by illness or a random car accident. How did that happen? It certainly was unfair and didn’t make any sense.

We need a faith that can withstand the brief and uncertain nature of life. Otherwise, we have a faith that’s not going to be of any use when the hard times come. Faith in a God who will make everything turn out OK in the end. Life is meant to be enjoyed. For each day we have is a gift from God for us to make the most of.

In the beginning, God created the world so that we would love him and enjoy him and all of his good gifts forever. Sin entered the world and destroyed all of this. But now Jesus has died and he’s risen again to save us from our enslavement to sin, so that we could live life as he intended from the beginning: finding joy and peace even when things are hard. Safe in the knowledge that He knows better than we do.

Enjoy life’s simple pleasures, not just life’s big events. The Bible reminds us in Psalm 118:24, “This is the day that the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.”

We must always place our trust in the Lord. Our time is in His hands. Corrie Ten Boom said, “Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God.” Even though life is unpredictable, God is always good. His promises are for our good. Nothing ever takes Him by surprise. Place all of your confidence in Him! Let me say this: We can live with confidence in an unpredictable world, knowing that God has said ask for wisdom and He promises to give it—especially when life doesn’t make sense: it turns out different than what we might expect.

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