Destiny…
The flow of people and politics…
The river cultures,
the Code of Hammurabi,
Abraham,
Pharaoh,
Moses,
the Decalogue,
Joshua,
Deborah,
Saul,
David and Solomon,
the Assyrian Conquest,
Jeremiah,
Cyrus,
Nehemiah,
Alexander the Great,
Pompey,
Herod,
Christ,
Paul,
Origen,
Polycarp,
Alaric the Hun,
Augustine,
Francis,
Mohammed,
Charles Martel,
Huss,
Luther,
Newton,
Nietzsche,
Beethoven,
Columbus,
Wagner,
Hitler,
King,
Teresa,
Mao,
Stalin,
the bomb,
Truman,
Einstein,
The Beatles,
Kennedy,
Alan Shepherd,
Reagan,
Saddam and Bush…
you and me…
History…
The flow of people and politics…
Is it meaningful or random?
Controlled or out-of-control?
Luke, an early medical scientist trained in rational observation, wrote, “In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed” (Luke 2:1). And so it was that Mary and Joseph traveled to Bethlehem.
In other words, government, politics, a law made and enforced by pagans, got Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem where Jesus was born.
This is government serving the purposes of a sovereign God…. A little peep revealing history to His Story. God having His way even after we’ve all had ours.
Today–in the midst of all our confusion, disappointments, taxes, wars and rumors of war, good and bad laws–we can know God is in charge.
He has made–and continues to make–all our ways conform to His plans.
As William Cullen Bryant, the poet, put it in To A Waterfowl, “There is a power, whose care teaches thy way along the pathless coast…lone, wandering, but not lost.”
Or as David put it, “Thou dost beset me behind and before, and layest Thy hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain it” (Psalm 139:6).
