Blog #21 - In God's Time

How do you comfort a mother who has lost a child while also knowing God sees all outcomes before they happen?

Imagine for a moment, a visual representation of your life's timeline. It's thousands of miles long so you can see ahead but not very far. While you can predict what will happen during your life's journey, you can't really know how any choice will play out in the long run.

We are limited by time and space but even in our limited state, we are able to see others future's depending on our perspective. If we are sitting ontop of a skyscraper we could see a car accident several blocks away that will affect traffic for miles but the people in their cars, who will be directly affected by the accident, will not see it yet.

Now, imagine you had the opportunity to shrink down and hover above your life's timeline. You'd be able to see everything.

If an argument in your twenties hurt someone and you didn't find out until you were fifty, you'd be able to see it and correct your actions so as not to create that hurt. On the ground, it would absolutely seem worth voicing your opinion in an effort to be properly understood. If only you could understand the hurt it would cause, you may decide to stay quiet in an effort to maintain the relationship and not hurt someone you care about, even if it temporarily hurts your objective in the interim.

In order to do this, we would have to exist outside space and time which is impossible for us but this is God's view of our lives. He is not just limited to the individual, he sees every person, nation, animal... even the individual grains of sand are completely known to God.

The fact that God exists outside of time means he sees each possible outcome for every tiny choice we make and because of this, He guides us in directions that seem to make no sense to us here on the ground.

It's easy to become angry when you know God sees all outcomes because some truly horrible things happen to all of us. How do you comfort a mother who has lost a child while also knowing God sees all outcomes before they happen?

Firstly, knowing and following God does not save you from pain. Infact, in many ways it may cause more. The key is to understand that this 80 or so years on earth are not "life". As horrible as it may be to lose a child, you can rest in the knowledge that your child is at peace and walking with Christ. As Christians, we know that we will see our loved ones again.

Perhaps if that child remained here on earth, it would prevent him or her from reaching heaven after a lifetime. I don't know because, like you, my view is from the ground.

What I do know is that, while I may not understand everything right now, I will one day when it's my turn to be taken from this life into the next and my perspective changes. When things get difficult, I have faith that God can see, not just my future, but the future of every life mine will touch along the way and I take solace in that.