Read Daniel 7:13-14; Revelation 1:6; Revelation 5:9-10
I was watching the Pioneer Woman this morning, and she made an interesting sounding cake. It is called an 11-Carton Cake. As the name suggests, there are eleven main ingredients, excluding butter, eggs, baking powder and baking soda. The fun part is the way the eleven are measured. After dumping a small container of vanilla yogurt into a bowl, that same carton becomes the measuring implement for the other ten ingredients. Who comes up with such novel ideas? How does someone figure out how to put together various components in just the right proportions to make something luscious? With those delicious dessert thoughts as the example, you may have heard about the idea of a cake and how the ingredients don't taste good on their own, well except for chocolate chips. Yet, when they are combined correctly, a yummy confection can be the result. It's a reminder that taken on their own, events in our life are often unpalatable. No one likes the "taste" of unpleasant circumstances, and if given the choice, we would never take them into our lives.
Yet, because our life circumstances are hand mixed for us by Almighty God, we will someday know the beauty of all He has done in our individual lives. Circumstances that were unfathomable when we looked at them in isolation will make sense when we see how they were used by the Lord for our good and His honor, Romans 8:28. I'd like to look at the cake analogy and take it up a notch. God is so wise, powerful and loving that He not only is doing amazing things within our individual lives, He is also intertwining myriads of lives together to make the sweetest confection ever. I was reminded of that fact this week.
We received a prayer request several days ago for a friend who lives in another town. We were asked to pray because her Mom had only days to live. Since her Mom has loved the Savior for decades and was looking forward to being with Him, our prayer mainly focused on her comfort and the family time that would be shared by those who came together to be with her. Yesterday, we learned that my friend's Mom is now with Jesus and other greatly loved family members. What I loved hearing was one story my friend related.
One of the people who came to visit them at the nursing home was a lady who joyfully told about how my friend's Mom had read Bible stories to her children and had taught them to pray. How many lives, I wonder, have been affected by those children and those whom they have touched? That's only one little vignette. How many other stories of intertwining has God written through that one lady's life? What if we try to ponder the millions and millions of other lives God has and is intertwining for His purposes? Who but God could mix lives together, just at the right time so that His will can be realized? He truly is unequaled and amazing in all that He does, Romans 11:33-36.
What will it look like when the Lord puts everything together? We have glimpses of the picture in today's scriptures from Daniel 7 and the Book of the Revelation. How wondrously the Lord ties everything together. Can you imagine what it might be like when Jesus rules over an everlasting kingdom which has people from every tongue, nation and tribe? What an intertwining we will see. How many wondrous stories will we hear of how the Lord put together lives from generation to generation, using even the unlikely as agents to share His love.
Who would and even could, use the unqualified and the flawed, intertwining our lives so that His gracious will would be done, 2 Corinthians 4:7; 1 Corinthians 1:26-31. Who thought of that? It was the King. The One Who will sit on His throne, and we will have the amazing joy of serving Him, Revelation 1:6.
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