“…according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will…” Ephesians 1:11
Many times over the past 16 years or so, probably due to my investigative nature and police mentality, I have returned in my mind to the possible source of my son’s handicap. Like an unsolved, cold case, murder mystery I pour over the evidence and attempt to solve this heinous crime.
Before we adopted Jake, he was born to a drug abusing mother and a biological father who had an extensive criminal and drug history. Was the drug use to blame? His biological mother received no prenatal care during her pregnancy. Was the mother’s negligence to blame? Jake was born almost two months premature. Was his premature birth to blame? He had severe seizures for almost a year as a baby. Were the seizures to blame?
I get angry when I think of all the negligence, stupidity, ignorance, sickness and sin that may have contributed to the mental and physical state my son lives in today. I want to avenge. I desire justice for my son.
Then I read Ephesians 1, and right around verse 11, I stand in awe of a much bigger picture.
I know there is a lot more going on in the first chapter of Ephesians, but in the lines of this inspired letter I discover some case breaking truths.
Before my son’s seizures God had a purpose. Before the premature birth, He had a plan. Before the drug abuse, the negligence, the criminal history there was intention in the design of the Creator of the universe on behalf of one broken little boy.
“Before the foundations of the world” verse 4 tells us, the predestined purpose of my son, and millions like him, was being worked out “according to the counsel of God’s will.”
I don’t pretend to fully understand that. But this weighty passage serves as a heavy anchor that keeps me steady in the most violent of opposing storms.
This anchor is not the security of a useless cliché that falls from the lips of well meaning Christians, “God knows what you’re going through.” Of course He does, He’s God. Instead it is the promise that God has an intentional plan for what you are going through. A plan that works all things according to the counsel of His will...a plan that precedes time and supersedes circumstances.
Ephesians 1 completes my investigation. My son is not a pitiful tragedy blamed on negligence or ignorance. He is a mysterious element of a divine plan. A predestined purpose of God’s will to the praise of His glorious grace. A display of the immeasurable greatness of God’s power according to the working of His great might.
Case closed.
