It’s sometimes hard to see how God is working in your life, especially when you’re going through a time that is particularly head-scratching or uncertain.

Consider the events that took place after Jesus was born. King Herod was feared for his brutality. He drowned his brother-in-law, executed his sister’s husband, decapitated his wife’s grandfather, murdered his own wife, killed his sister’s second husband, murdered assorted Pharisees, and killed three of his own sons (two by strangulation)!

Jesus was born into a context of fear and uncertainty. When they excavated Herod’s coffin in 2007 there was evidence of it having been attacked and defaced. Even after Herod’s death people were trying to get back at him.

In Matthew 2:16 we learn that Herod soon “gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under…” Such was his paranoia about a potential rival King. So the holy family had to flee another 140 kilometres from Bethlehem to the border of Egypt. They would have travelled further still, perhaps to Alexandria.

When Herod died, Joseph, Mary and Jesus returned—but to Nazareth not Bethlehem. By that time Herod’s son Archelaus was reigning with the same tyrannical rule of his father. One of his first acts was to put down an anti-government riot by slaughtering 3000 Jews.

Here’s why I am telling you all of this. God was working through human history to save his people. He came to us personally in Christ on a rescue mission. When he did so, everything wasn’t “neat and tidy.” It was dangerous. There was fear. It was messy. There was terror. It was difficult. There was uncertainty.

If I was journeying alongside the holy family, perhaps I would have asked, ‘Lord, are you sure this is all unfolding according to your plan?’

But, of course, it was.

I say this to encourage you forward, especially when you’re not sure where or how God is working. It’s sometimes hard to see, especially when you’re going through a time that is particularly head-scratching or uncertain.

But no hardship is too hard for the guiding hand of God to direct or redeem. And no uncertainty is too uncertain for the guiding hand of God to direct or redeem.

In Genesis 18:14 God says: “Is anything too hard for the LORD?” No it isn’t. Not then. Not now.

You may be scratching your head, but God isn’t. Trust the God who is forever at work for his people, even when we can’t see how everything fits together. 

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Notes:

–Bible quotes are from the NIV.