not so fast.

When I say what my favorite thing about God is, sometimes I feel like an adolescent girl who rattles off 6 names when asked who her best friend is.  It’s hard to choose just one, isn’t it?

This morning my favorite thing about God is when He uses something satan intended for evil for good.  I have experienced God’s restoration over and over in my life, and experienced healing from things I never thought could be healed.  When I pick up the pieces of my heart and put them back together myself, my heart gets hardened.  It becomes calloused from life’s hardships, and I become cynical and closed off.  But when God heals my heart, He works a miracle by piecing it back together so that it breathes.  My heart feels more after God heals, not less.  The best part about God’s healing touch, whether it be a relationship restored or a hardship redeemed, is that the ‘after’ is always better than the ‘before’.   God has the ability to take something that is broken beyond repair, put it back together, and make it more beautiful than anything you or I could have come up with on our own.   And we usually end up thankful for the very situation that hurt us.  He’s pretty amazing like that. 

I heard a story from our India site that reminded me of God’s ability to bring beauty from ashes.  In India, 55% of people are Hindu, 42% are Muslim, and just 2% are Christian.  The orphanages Back2Back partners with are Christian based, but they accept children from any background.  More than likely, most do not come from Christian families.  Parents who either will not or cannot care for their children leave them in an orphanage (satan’s plan), where they learn about a God who loves them and wants to have a relationship with them (God’s plan).  They leave a family that would have raised them to believe in a religion based on always working to try to earn god’s love (satan’s plan), and join a family that tells them God loves them exactly as they are (God’s plan).  Just last week, 30 children in the orphanages we partner with professed faith in Christ.  God used the very thing that should have broken and destroyed them, to save them.  In His severe mercy, He allowed pain and suffering to occur so that His children would know His love.   We don’t always understand God’s ways, but we can trust Him to work all things for good. 

“You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.” Genesis 50:20