[And, because I'm a word nerd, I just looked up what "sovereign" actually means. According to dictionary.com, it is an adjective meaning "having supreme rank, power, or authority," "preeminent," "indisputable," "being above all others in character, importance, excellence, etc." In case you were wondering.]
A couple of months ago, God used Chick-fil-a sauce to remind me of his sovereignty (his "power"... "authority"... "preeminence").
I was having a lunch meeting with my coworker at Hope Reins (the non-profit ministry where I currently work part time that uses horses as therapy for kids in crisis, which is itself an example of God's sovereignty! Seriously, I'll have to tell you sometime about how this opportunity came about...but I digress...), and I had picked up Chick-fil-a for us. But (gasp!) they had given us a minimal amount of Chick-fil-a sauce. But wait! My coworker happened to have a couple of packets in her car from when they had given her extra the day before. So she went out to her car to get them and was gone for a while. When she came back, she told me how she had run into one of the interns who she thought had already left for the day. But because my coworker unexpectedly went out to her car at that moment, she was able to talk to her about something tough she was going through and encourage her in that.
My coworker pointed me to God's providence in that moment: "Just think...If you hadn't asked if I wanted something from Chick-fil-a...and then if they had given you enough Chick-fil-a sauce...and if they hadn't given me extra the day before...that conversation never would have happened. Isn't it amazing how God was working to bring that conversation about even the day before it happened?"
I had a similar conversation the other day as I was FaceTiming with a friend from England that I had met in Italy. And he pointed out the crazy fact that if any of the intricate details that surrounded the formation of our friendship hadn't happened (such as, most notably, both moving to Rome within a month of each other and having mutual friends), we likely never would have met. And yet here we were...catching up on each other's lives and reminiscing about a beautiful shared season.
I think C.S. Lewis explains this best:
In friendship…we think we have chosen our peers. In reality a few years’ difference in the dates of our births, a few more miles between certain houses, the choice of one university instead of another…the accident of a topic being raised or not raised at a first meeting–any of these chances might have kept us apart. But, for a Christian, there are, strictly speaking no chances. A secret master of ceremonies has been at work. Christ, who said to the disciples, “Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you,” can truly say to every group of Christian friends, “Ye have not chosen one another but I have chosen you for one another.” The friendship is not a reward for our discriminating and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to each of us the beauties of others.
I don't think either of the scenarios described above were mere accidents. Sheer chance. Just fate. No...I believe there's an Author of this story.
And what I believe about God's sovereignty affects how I view everything else...my salvation (Do I choose God or did he choose me before the foundation of the world? Does he initiate salvation or is it all up to me...whether or not I "make a decision for Christ"?)...my location and occupation (Does God call me to specific places and people and jobs, or is whatever and wherever I decide fine as long as I'm living "as unto the Lord"?)...my love life (Does God draw us [let's call that the ever-inexplicable "chemistry," shall we?] to a particular person with whom we could best serve him? Or does God not really care who we marry, as long as they share the same beliefs/values/goals?).
I've thought a lot about this in the past year or so. Partly because I wrote a 12-page research paper about "Can Prayer Change God's Will?" for a Theology class last year. And partly because I've internally and externally processed all the aforementioned questions. Many times.
Because this question is much (MUCH) bigger than a blog post but I want to keep it brief...I'm going to do something I don't usually do: I'm going to share with you something I wrote in my prayer journal the other day (omitting, of course, some of the specifics...so you can relate it to those areas in your own life in which your faith in God's sovereignty might feel shaky and your prayers feel unanswered).
"Creator of the Universe,
Father. Bridegroom. Brother. Friend. Shepherd. Head. Servant. Lion. Lamb.
Metaphors.
Echoes.
Traces.
Hints.
They're everywhere.
You created this world with built-in reflections of your character. So we could know you more. So we could have visible, tangible representations of our not-yet-seen God.
But they're just dim reflections. Like looking in a smudged, broken mirror. That's all we have for now. But one day we'll see you up-close-and-personal. Face to face. No more veil. No more mirror. Full-on togetherness. Forever.
OH HOW I LONG FOR THAT DAY!
This world is beautiful, but it's so broken. It brings pleasure and pain. It fills up our senses, but it leaves us aching for the real thing. YOU are the real thing. You are the only permanent, whole, never-changing, fully-satisfying thing. You are perfectly complete and completely perfect in and of yourself.
OH GOD! Why am I always looking to the right and to the left? Why are my affections -- my heart -- so easily seduced? I cannot love you perfectly (yet) and yet you love me still. Why? I am so unworthy of your great grace.
Oh Lord...empty me. Fill me with yourself. Help my heart long for you only. What would that look like? To no longer chase the things of this world?
Oh Father. You know my heart. You know what distracts me most. You know what it longs for (but that I desperately don't want to want more than you).
But you withhold no good thing. And you are a good, good Father. When I ask for bread, you won't give me a stone. Like the impudent neighbor and the persistent widow (Luke 11 and 18), you tell us to be bold enough to bother you!
So I'll keep coming before you. If for nothing else, just to be in your presence. Like a peasant coming before a king. Day after day. Eventually more or less forgetting what she was asking for but just coming to spend time with the king himself. And maybe that's why you don't give us what we want right away...because it is in the continual coming to you that our relationship with you grows. If you simply handed us our every whim, we'd skip obliviously away from you to revel in our latest treasure, only to come crawling back to you when we yearned for the next thing.
But in not answering us right away, we are compelled to come before you consistently. In doing so, you call us to spend more time with you. You don't always answer us by granting our requests, but you answer us with yourself, with your character. And our hearts grow to love more deeply the thing (or person) for which we are praying. So if (in your timing) you see fit to open the floodgates and rain down the affirmative answer to our prayer, we will weep with joy and you are more greatly glorified than if we had prayed for it once and you were just a wish-granting genie-god.
But you're not. You're bigger. You're sovereign. You know best. Better, higher ways and thoughts. Thank you. For not answering our prayers right away. For being bigger. Wiser.
Sovereign.
Help me to trust. Even in the aching. The waiting. The already but not yet..."
May we grow in our faith...seeing our waiting and our being still as an active act of trust in our Sovereign God. And may we have eyes to see how he is working all things together for his glory and our good. Even in something as small as a packet of Chick-fil-a sauce.
