Core Value #5 in our company is Winning. The theme Bible passage for that core value comes from Jeremiah 29:11 where God said to his people “I know the plans I have for you. Plans to prosper you and not to harm you. Plans to give you hope and a future.” I taught this core value in our team training last week, waxing eloquently about why winning was important, about why God’s design for us to win, and about attitudes and attributes of winners. My team bought it hook, line & sinker.

Unbeknownst to me, the day before friends of mine had lost their son-in-law to a car accident. He died leaving a young wife, and two primary school aged children. Today the mother-in-law posted to Facebook that the last two days (which included the funeral) had been the hardest of her life.

Plans to prosper you………not to harm………hope…….a future.

So where is the prosperity, the hope, the future in this? Where’s the God who wants us to win that I taught about last week? I’ve been struggling with that thought. My guess is that its hard to offer praise to God in a household that has experienced such loss, I get that. How can we maintain our faith and reconcile the death of this Daddy with a God who says he wants to prosper us, give us a hope and a future. This is hard math. I just can’t make it add up.

I remember Job had everything taken from him, and he said “Yet if God slays me, I will still trust him.” Nice poetry. But none of us want to have to do it.

Understanding why this young man died is beyond my grasp. But I do remember hearing Babbie Mason sing once at our church in Columbia that “God is too wise to be mistaken. God is too good to be unkind. So when you don’t understand, when you don’t see His plan, when you can’t trace His hand, trust His heart.” His heart is pointed toward us, toward that young widow, her children and even the young man that was taken from them.

I believe that.

We who trust Him do so because we know Him. We know His character. We know His voice. We know His deeds. We know what He says about His desire and intent for us. That’s enough to allow us to continue trusting Him when nothing makes sense. We’ve read the end of the story. And it allows us to say with Job “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.”