Who's In Control?

Let me tell you a story. A guy loses his job......the guy is a Christian…..at least he calls himself one…..tells everyone he talks to that “I know God is going to work it out"....All the while never really humbling himself before God and really looking in the mirror to deal with the crap in his life because what he really believes is that he can figure it out on his own. About six months in to his unemployment God stops playing and begins to do work on his mind, heart and soul...to hear him tell it, it was a very unpleasant experience but maybe the start of something important in his life. So eight months in everything this guy has touched has fallen through…..the calls aren’t coming in anymore….his resume is not generating any leads and he can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel....His wife is working like 5 jobs, is completely spent and there is no end in sight. His wife’s aunt...out of the blue...calls and offers to pay for his wife to go on a trip to the west coast...which at the time is the only way she could go anywhere...but the planning just isn’t working out...they can’t get flights to match up and have problems finding a place to stay. At the last minute everything kind of falls into place...the night before she is to leave she goes on line and changes her seat assignment just before she goes to bed. She gets on her flight but has some trouble with her bag…..the guy across the aisle from her helps her with her bag and through that strikes up a conversation that lasts the entire flight. During the conversation his wife brings up that her husband looking for work and that he has been for eight months...this guy asks some questions about her husbands back ground and then tells her to have her husband call him. His wife tells him about the flight and gives him the guys number and he says that he will call…..while in his mind he figures that this will turn out like everything else has but knows he should do it and so he does...long story short...last Thursday I signed the offer sheet to go to work for this guy from the flight....now you tell me who’s in control...no such thing as chance. That’s not to say that I didn’t question it..and Him...I had several dark nights of the soul...the kind where you can’t sleep and I questioned much...I wondered what If all this is just a load...I have been and I am in the process of being broken...but here’s kind of where I am...and I said this to another PeaRidger in a conversation a couple of weeks ago...looking at those moments that I had those heavy questions...those questions of purpose and truth...what I have come to think is this...If He’s not in control...if all this is just random...I’m screwed...and by that I mean FUBAR...and to be honest..if it’s a luck of the draw thing we’re all in trouble. The good news is that I know He’s in control..He’s in control in ways that I can’t even begin to understand...but the other thing is this...this job that He’s given to me... in no way puts things back to “normal”...all that is out the window...I have peace in the fact that He provided...and in that His grace is sufficient...but if I allow myself to slide back into the comfort of my life the last eight months of struggle and anger and epiphanies will be lost...the realization of my depravity and His abundant grace...the battle with guilt and self-loathing because I don’t deserve Him and His gift..the knowledge that I could be the most sinful person you know...I must continue to wrestle with these things in order to grow...it’s not going to be easy, in fact it's probably going to be very hard because I will want to ease back in to the comfort....but if it were easy everyone would be great at it. What I need to remind myself every day is that this entire thing was never really about a job.