Walk in Wisdom

God Only Knows

Exodus 2:23a & 25

During those many days the king of Egypt died, and the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried for help. … And God heard their groaning …God saw the people of Israel—and God knew.

Is the truth that God knew leading you to deepened joy today or deepened sorrow, friend? Maybe you’ve been saying something like this recently. “If God knew my business would fail; if He knew I’d have to file for bankruptcy, why did He inspire me to start the work in the first place?” “If God knew my wife would leave me for another man even though I was faithful to her for decades, why did He let me fight so hard to preserve our marriage through years of counseling?” “If God knew the baby I’d prayed for was going to die in my womb, why did He lead me on with false joy for six months, only to dash it? Why would He do that to me?” Or maybe yours is like the one I heard from a resilient missionary who takes care of orphans in South Africa: “If God knew my father would abuse me all the way through high-school, even after I became a Christian, why didn’t He give me a way of escape?” But there’s another side to God’s knowing that we need to consider before pointing the finger. A side called redemption that proves there’s more to the story than meets the eye. God knew that setting aside His supreme power to take on the form of an infant would make Him vulnerable to the sufferings of men. God knew that one of his closest friends for three years would betray Him to the mob. God knew that the thousands of people He fed and healed and taught and served would crucify Him. God knew that the path to saving sinners was lined with loneliness and abandonment and brutality and a cat-of-nine-tails and a roman cross and rejection from all people. But listen, friend: He drank every last drop of that bitter cup because He knew that the eternal joy of heaven would far outweigh the pain it took to get us there.

So in your own agonizing today, friend, in the confusion that met you when you woke up this morning, I encourage you to look again to Jesus! Know that He knows, that He understands, that He empathizes; and let that be enough for now.