Thanksgiving: Trusting in God’s Hidden Providence

A month before I was to be married, my car was stolen. I was very thankful—not right away, of course. I liked my car. But the police found it after the joy-riders were done with it, and I got it back. Not only that, but whoever took it did just enough superficial damage that the insurance company declared it “totaled,” settled for the car’s Blue Book value, and then sold it back to me at a very low cost. The end result was that I now had enough money (I didn’t before) to take my new bride on a honeymoon. So, a few months later, as my family went around the table at Thanksgiving and listed things for which we were thankful, I could include “being the victim of grand theft auto” on my list.
Actually, according to the testimony of Scripture, the fact is that the list of “things we should be thankful for” is so long that it is much more difficult to come up with anything for which we should not be thankful. After all, we are promised that “all things work for the good of those who love God” (Romans 8:28). Now, there are probably lots of things that we’re not thankful for yet. But once we see heaven and “know fully even as we are fully known” (1 Corinthians 13:12), then we can expect that we will fall on our knees in genuine thankfulness for even the things that we see as the worst things that happen to us. Now, how can this be? I have no idea. Which is exactly why we call it “faith.” If we could understand it, then they’d have to call it something else.
And that’s the point. Unlike the story I told above, we don’t always see a tidy resolution to the things that happen to us in this world. The revelation of the reasons why misfortunes happen is not only sometimes delayed, but sometimes it is never given to us as long as we live. Or, even more than that, there are probably lots of times when we think we’ve understood the reason why something happens when, in fact, the real reason was something else entirely. Only God knows. For our part, our role is simply to trust that God will work His gracious purpose in all things. As it says, “Be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations; I will be exalted in the earth” (Psalm 46:10, emphasis added).
There are times in life when that truth is easy to accept, and there are other times when it is hard. But God’s wisdom is always trustworthy. The best thing to be thankful for this Thanksgiving season is that our faith does not rely on our understanding of worldly circumstances. Whether something that happens to us is easy to understand or difficult is not where our hope lies. Instead, our hope is in God Himself, who has guaranteed that those who believe on Jesus have eternal life. And so we don’t need to see things working out for our good before we can trust that they are.
Where earthly promises sometimes come with fine print, God’s promises come instead with the big, bright, clear assurance of the Gospel. As it says, “He who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all—how will He not also, along with Him, graciously give us all things?” (Romans 8:32). God’s clearly demonstrated love for us surpasses our understanding by a greater distance than anything else that has ever—or will ever—happen to us. It is faith in what happened at Calvary that makes faith in what happens everywhere else possible.
Daniel Finn is pastor of Pilgrim Lutheran Church in Waterloo, Iowa, and Faith Lutheran Church in Parkersburg, Iowa.