"Yet God has made everything beautiful in His time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot fathom the whole scope of God's work from beginning to end."
Ecclesiastes 3:11
There's something about that verse that fills me with awe. Each one of us were born with an innate yearning. A yearning that God Himself put in us: to see His glory.
We long to see the "very good" that God created in Genesis.
We long to see the tears wiped from every eye in Revelation.
We long for things to be made right.
For redemption.
And we serve the God who does just that. He sees the big picture that we can't see. He works in every situation - good and bad. He brings about redemption in our lives. And one day He will make all things right.
In his commentary on the passage, Matthew Henry writes:
"Though we see not the complete beauty, yet we shall see it, and a glorious sight it will be, when the mystery of God shall be finished... We must wait with patience for the full discovery of that which to us seems intricate and perplexed...While the picture is drawing, and the house in building, we see not the beauty of either; but when the artist has given them their finishing strokes, then all appears very good."
The Whole Scope
Before I was adopted, my parents had been married for 15 years unable to have children. In 1989, the year my brother was born in Romania and two years before I was born, my dad saw a 20/20 episode on television. It was about the Romanian orphanages. My mom did not see it. 1991, the year I was born, came along and 20/20 aired an update episode on the Romanian orphanages. This time both my parents watched it. They knew immediately they had to go.
While they were there they came in contact with a doctor named, Christina, who was trying to save as many children as she could. The ambulance driver who was about to take me from the hospital to the orphanage told this doctor about me; because, he knew, if he took me to the orphanage I would die. I weighed less than 5 lbs. at 3 weeks old. This doctor connected me with my parents for adoption and made multiple daily visits to keep me alive; because, I was so sick. My brother (who is not biologically related to me) was adopted at 26 months from the orphanage setting and will never recover from the damage done. Within weeks of my parents returning to the U.S. with us, Romanian orphanages were shut down and 80,000 children were not ever allowed to be adopted.
My life is a testament to Ecclesiastes 3:11.
If my parents had not gone through the painful season of not having children, they might not have travelled half way around the world to Romania to adopt children.
If they had both seen the original episode in 1989, they might have gone then, and perhaps my brother would have been rescued immediately from that institution that left him forever changed. But I would not have been born yet.
If the ambulance driver just took me to the orphanage like he was supposed to, the doctor
would not have been able to save me and connect me with my parents. Because of these two individuals who lived in complete poverty cared for the little helpless life in front of them, I did not die in infancy.
My parents' deeply painful season, my brother's time in the orphanage, the two people working in a poverty stricken, war torn country - were all part of what God used to bring about rescuing me, adopting me, and ultimately my salvation in Christ.
In the midst of hard seasons and difficult circumstances, we can only see what is in front of us. But God sees the big picture that we can't. His plan is so vast that we can't even fathom the whole scope of His work from beginning to end. He is our almighty, good God. Because of that, we can have full confidence in Him as our redeemer.
Our Redeemer
We live in a broken world. Romans 8 tells us that all of creation eagerly awaits to be redeemed from death, decay, sin, and suffering. Eagerly awaits for things to be made right. Eagerly awaits for God's glory to be revealed. As believers, we get to see glimpses of that glory when we see moments of God's redemption in our lives. But one day, we will no longer have to hold onto just glimpses. One day we will stand before our Redeemer face to face, and we will see what we have been longing for. Oh what "a glorious sight it will be when the mystery of God shall be finished".
And that awe-filled hope is a life giving truth to which we can cling.