And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them. [Romans 8:28 (NLT)]
God has a plan for each and every one of us and no experience is ever wasted. All that happened in the past has prepared us for what happens today and what will happen tomorrow. For example, consider Moses; the first two-thirds of his life were merely preparation for what he accomplished during the last third. For forty years, he acquired a unique skill set while living as a member of Pharaoh’s household. Being the adopted son of an Egyptian princess, he received an education befitting a prince and came to understand the protocol and ways of the royal court. Moreover, since he also was cared for by his birth mother, he knew Hebrew and understood the plight of his people. With his Egyptian/Hebrew background, Moses could communicate with both Israelites and their Egyptian oppressors. Quite likely, he was the only person with access to both Israel’s elders and Pharaoh’s court and that royal education certainly served him well when he penned most of the first five books of the Bible.
Moses’ second forty years were spent as a shepherd in Midian. A stranger in a strange land, the pampered prince had four decades to learn how to live as a nomad and shepherd. He also had forty years to learn about controlling his temper (the reason he landed in Midian in the first place). The skills he developed while herding dumb animals in the wilderness prepared him for forty years of guiding over two million “stiff-necked” people and their livestock through the desert.
At eighty, Moses might have been thinking about taking it easy—maybe selling the sheep and relaxing in his hammock under a palm tree. God, however, wasn’t going to let those eighty years of experience go to waste. It was during the last third of his life that Moses fulfilled his God-given purpose by shepherding the Israelites to the Promised Land.
Our life experiences do more than develop character and spiritual maturity; they provide us with distinctive insights, strengths, and capabilities. Every one of our past successes, failures, sorrows, joys, gains, and losses prepared us to do God’s work today and every one of today’s experiences will become tomorrow’s assets. We know how the story of Moses finished but how will our stories end? Like Moses, will we use our assets to further God’s Kingdom or will we squander them while relaxing in the hammock under a palm tree or sitting on the porch in a rocking chair?
No experience is wasted. Everything in life is happening to grow you up, to fill you up, to help you to become more of who you were created to be. [Oprah Winfrey]
As I began looking for, listing, and thanking God for the little blessings hidden in each day (His “butterfly kisses”), I couldn’t help but wonder about the rest of the day. In a fallen world that all but guarantees loss, pain, misery, and trouble, does God just scatter these special moments of grace willy-nilly? Does He randomly send things like encouraging emails, the perfect worship song at just the right time, the aroma of gardenias wafting through the air, a hummingbird flitting through the garden, a shooting star, or doves nesting outside the window? What about the rest of our moments—the ones when we’re struggling with colicky babies, chronic pain, a severely disabled child, stage-4 cancer, betrayal, or abuse? As I look at my prayer list, I see prodigal children, financial woes, severe depression, food insecurity, parents who’ve lost two infants in less than two years, families dealing with Alzheimer’s, and a newly-wed who, less than an hour after sending her husband off to work with a kiss, learned that he died of an aortic aneurysm while on the train. Hearing children’s laughter while frolicking in the pool, a popsicle on a hot summer day, a rainbow, or seeing the elusive green flash at sunset only go so far in alleviating their anguish or sorrow. Where is God’s grace the rest of the time?
While translations like the NIV and NLT call him Xerxes, he’s called Ahasuerus in translations like the ESV and RSV. When the king’s Persian name of Khshayârshâ was translated into Hebrew, it became Ahasuerus but, when it was translated into Greek, Khshayârshâ became Xerxes. Regardless of the translation, Xerxes and Ahasuerus are one and the same and we encounter him in the book of Esther.
While both are joy and happiness are pleasurable, there seems to be a fine line between the two. Happiness is more like satisfaction. Dependent on external circumstances, it needs everything to go right or as close to right as possible. On the other hand, because joy doesn’t depend on what is happening to us or to the people we love, it is possible even when everything has gone terribly wrong. Happiness is an emotion which, like anger, sadness, fear, and jealousy, is short-lived but joy can be a permanent state of mind. Because happiness takes the short view, it’s hard to be happy in suffering. Because joy takes the long view, it can endure through suffering.
Devotions of the Heart 