eternity in the heart

As we are invited to pray about so much bad news, from personal to local to national to global, it's good to be reminded that God is working in all of these circumstances.  As I joined you in being horrified about the overwhelming floods in Texas, I was so encouraged to learn that thousands of volunteers are flooding the hard-hit areas with help in recovery and rebuilding.  No doubt, many of those are believers who do so in response to a direct Request heard from God.  I think of a couple who have purchased a trailer that has six showers to provide warm and cleansing relief, free to those who lack such simple amenities.  Or the woman who travels to disaster sites to help find lost pets for their physically devastated and emotionally distressed "parents".

All of this good makes me think of Ecclesiastes 3:11:  [God] has set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.  The human impulse to help one's neighbor in desperate need, to create peaceful beauty in ugly disasters, to long for a more just and fair society are signs of His Image baked into our hearts.  This humane influence, though deeply marred by sin, and incapable of saving anyone eternally, is nonetheless a sign of The God of Eternity, Who cares about people in hard times.  He is the same One Who makes His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust (Matthew 5:45).  Just as He uses heavenly bodies to bless all of us who are, by nature, evil and unjust, so He uses human bodies like ours to do the same.

So, as we pray for God to send helpers next door or across the globe, let's be sure to expect Him to send more than just people like us who know Him.  And let's pray that, in what these helpers experience of His Common Grace, they'll seek to fathom what God has done through them, from beginning to end.  And let's be sure to be on-hand to look into God's Word together with them to find His Answers to humanly unfathomable circumstances and questions.