Providence

is not just a city in Rhode Island

Scripture Reading: Genesis 50

On Providence

The clearest memory I have about the family move from Elko, Nevada to Owasso, Oklahoma is the moment I announced the move in 8th-grade shop class. My classmates broke out into a spontaneous acapella version of “Okie from Muskogee.” The other day mom and I were talking and somehow the conversation veered into that time in our family history. Mom was mildly surprised that I wasn’t aware or had forgotten some of the backstories of how we ended up in Owasso.

According to mom, dad and my uncle Ivan were both looking to make a move. They traveled together to Joplin, Missouri where dad had a job lead. They had already decided that’s where we were going to land. It was such a certainty; they were looking at farmland to buy. But when dad interviewed and was offered the job, the pay wasn’t enough, so he turned it down.

He and Ivan then headed toward Fort Worth, Texas where another job awaited. On the way they passed through Tulsa and dad was talking to someone (I don’t know who) and was told about a job opening at Swenson Chevrolet. He went by, interviewed, and was hired. He found a rent house off Highway 20, close to the Limestone Fire Department and the next thing I learned was that folk in Muskogee, Oklahoma USA don’t smoke marijuana, at least Merle said they didn’t back then.

Providence, the foreseeing care and guidance of God, has always fascinated me. All the “what if’s” of life. What if the Joplin job had paid well or dad hadn’t met the guy in Tulsa who told him about a job opening at Swenson? I would have either finished high school in Joplin or Fort Worth. This means I would not have met Monica, nor had the sons I have, nor the grandchildren I have, nor would I be where I am doing what I am doing. I wouldn’t, in some sense, be who I am. The things that, in many ways, define my life would not have been. I would have been shaped by different people and different experiences and had different outcomes.

But here I am. Who I am. Where I am. I’ve made decisions along the way that have brought me to this place. But in large part, I am who I am because of circumstances, events, and choices not my own. But whose? Random chance or divine Providence? I come down on the side of Providence.

Plans are great. I have some. Goals are good. Mostly. But better still are the purposes of God. It’s not about me. Or you. Still, I find great peace in knowing life is not meaningless events randomly strung together to no real end. God is working out his purposes in Christ and you and I somehow are a part of that Greater Story. Things happen - chance meetings, casual conversations, accidents – that involve us in the forward movement of History that is His Story and we often aren’t even aware of the importance of those happenings.

There’s this little random bit of information tossed into the story of Joseph in the book of Genesis. (37:12-17) Joseph is on a mission to check up on his brothers and he can’t find them. This unnamed man finds Joseph wandering around a field. This guy just happened to overhear a conversation in which Joseph’s brothers said they were going to Dothan and this information gets Joseph back on track.

What if this man hadn’t been there to hear the brothers’ plans or he hadn’t seen Joseph or cared enough to ask what he was looking for? I assume Joseph would have returned home. He would have been spared being sold as a slave in Egypt, but it would have (hypothetically) meant Joseph would not have been in place to prevent the disaster the coming famine would have had. The Hebrews would not have been slaves in Egypt. Moses would not have grown up in Pharaoh’s household. He would not have been the deliverer and the lawgiver (which would have put a big dent in Charleston Heston’s acting career). All this hinged on a “chance” meeting between some unnamed random dude in a field. That guy, I can promise you, didn’t go there thinking he was a hinge on which the purposes of God were swinging that moment. Shoot, had he known what happened to Joseph he might have felt pangs of regret that he was instrumental in his trials. Joseph understood all this. We see it in his words to his brothers: “You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.”

God’s Story is unfolding. It’s already been written in His eternal Decrees. All the details, big and small, the happy and the sad, the hard and the dark providences, are working together for His good purposes. In some way, our lives fit into this story. And it isn’t important to know how or why, but just to rest in knowing it is because He is.