Everything Matters

A poster.  A random mail package.  A citizenship lost.  A "four-legged" insect.  An English speaking family.  And every Friday night. 

What do these six things have in common?  This is not one of those "super I.Q. tests" that challenge us to find the commonality in a random sequence.  This is no mental gymnastic.  It's everyday, real life. 

The common denominator for the apparently random list above is simply this:  everything matters.

Romans 11:33-36 puts it this way:

Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!

How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out!


"Who has known the mind of the Lord?
Or who has been his counselor?"


"Who has ever given to God,
that God should repay him?"


For from him and through him and to him are all things.
To him be the glory forever! Amen.

All things are from Him, through Him, to Him. 

Now, this won't be a theological treatise on why God even allows evil to be introduced into our lives.  Tonight there's a much bigger question to ponder:  Why does God use apparently random, meaningless, mundane situations to introduce Himself - in all His majesty and glory - to human beings, even those who are not looking for Him?!    

This one stumps me far more than the evil-in-the-world question.  The only plausible answer are the last 7 words of Romans 11.  But tonight I won't try to figure it out.  Instead I will just skip and dance and sway in the wonder of it all:

•      The miracle of how God uses a "cheesy" poster of Jesus at the U.N. to stir an Egyptian man to know Him;
•      The wonder of how a French version of Luke winds up mailed to the door, and into the heart, of a Moroccan Berber;
•      The Jobian way in which a man is stripped from his only passion, the Kurdish land he lives to fight for, in order to receive a far better citizenship in the City of God;
•      The mesmerizing intricacy of Hebrew scripture saying insects have four legs (when the scientific Muslim mind knows they have six and therefore the Bible can't be trusted!), but oh wait, the Hebrews called the walking limbs "legs" and the jumping limbs something else!  Now the scientific mind turns the tables on other skeptics.
•      The mere hospitality of an American family hosting a Wahabi Saudi student (as pure as pure can get in Islam) practicing English every week, never verbally witnessing, yet ever-impressing Truth and Life into him - a seed that blossoms into a seminary student teaching us about the Trinity today!
•      And the silent testimony of not choosing debauchery every Friday night like other "pagan Christians" showing a Pakistani the true righteousness that comes from grace.  

Simple scenarios sprinkled with small acts of obedience that yielded Eternal consequences. 

God loves Muslims.  Gloriously.  He proved it to me once more tonight through the lives of these men I have met.  And the beautiful thread for me to hold on to, that for God:  Everything matters.