You and I can neither predict nor control the future, but we can control how we respond to its unpredictability. Our response, in turn, plays a pivotal role in our personal future.
How can we become more optimistic? A clinical health psychologist explained that she works with patients to “uncover systems of beliefs and assumptions people are making about themselves in their lives” so they can “begin to change those.”
When we begin making optimistic assumptions, our attitudes toward our experiences become more positive, our stress levels respond, and our physical health can improve as well. In other words, when we choose to view life positively, life often responds in kind.
The key to relational truth
This psychological principle also holds true spiritually.
When tragedy strikes, it’s human nature to cry with Christ from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). We want God to explain his ways so we can decide whether or not to trust him with our pain.
But what if we cannot experience his help until we trust his heart?
Relational truth must be chosen to be experienced. You cannot prove you should get married until you get married. You cannot prove you’ll recover from surgery until you trust the surgeon.
You should examine the evidence, but then you must step beyond the evidence into a relationship that becomes self-validating.
“Thy sea is so great and my boat is so small”
So it is with God. He wants us to develop and use our intellectual capacities as fully as possible (cf. 2 Peter 1:5; Matthew 22:37). But when it comes to understanding the mind of God, he tells us, “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways” (Isaiah 55:8). Our finite, fallen minds may not be able to comprehend his perfect will until we are with him in heaven (1 Corinthians 13:12).
And as long as we hold our Father at arm’s length while we wait for explanations that may not help us, we forfeit the mercy that will.
President John F. Kennedy kept on his desk a block of wood inscribed with the words, “O God, Thy sea is so great and my boat is so small.” They were adapted from this poem by Winfred Ernest Garrison:
Thy sea, O God, so great, My boat so small. It cannot be that any happy fate Will me befall Save as Thy goodness opens paths for me Through the consuming vastness of the sea.
Thy winds, O God, so strong, So slight my sail. How could I curb and bit them on the long And saltry trail, Unless Thy love were mightier than the wrath Of all the tempests that beset my path?
Thy world, O God, so fierce, And I so frail. Yet, though its arrows threaten oft to pierce My fragile mail, Cities of refuge rise where dangers cease, Sweet silences abound, and all is peace.
