God does not make mistakes

All keen fans of basketball will remember him - the best foreign player to join the Spanish basketball team in all it's history. He scored the most baskets of the league on four occasions, he had the greatest variety of dunks, and he only measured 1.94m! He had all the qualifications to play for the NBA, but God wanted him to remain in Spain, to delight us with his skill at basketball. Hundreds of young people grew up watching him play.

I am referring, as you may well have already worked out, to NATE DAVIS. He always talked to people about his personal relationship with God, saying, "God is the most important part of my life." He was never rude in his actions or words. Some years ago his wife, Arme, died of Aids. She was given a contaminated blood transfusion when she gave birth to her second child, and was condemned to die young. Nate could not understand why this should happen... "I love God, why should he allow this to happen to me?" he said over and over again.

Sometimes we hold on to the theory that if we love and obey God, everything in our life will turn out well. This is not true. It is a mistake to say that God is a form of security against all harm. He does not promise us complete understanding of all the reasons why an unexpected situation knocks us sideways, and fills us with bitterness. No, not all of life is easy to understand.

It is difficult to remember that God does not make mistakes when misfortune strikes, and fills our lives with sorrow, but it remains true. God does not do any thing by accident, he does not commit errors, despite the fact that our pathway can become obscured with difficulties, even though we lose someone close to us, or life just seems to be purposeless. Although with every day that goes by it can seem harder to understand the pain and sorrow, we must look towards heaven and recognise, even with tears in our eyes, that God never makes mistakes.

Do you realise that God has not promised to get us out of every difficult situation we encounter, but that he has promised to always be with us?

David wrote, "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death...YOU WILL BE WITH ME." The Bible says that God will take our pain.

There is no-one who has become a child of God who will not be protected and consoled by God himself in their suffering. Not only this, but all the pain we go through has been endured by Jesus himself when he made himself as a man like us. He voluntarily took the suffering of humanity, and made it his own, so that we could have life. No-one has carried such pain, never has anyone been left so deserted by everything and everyone, including God himself, who forsook him while he was on the cross, so that he would never have to leave you.