Great is Your Faithfulness

Consider the work of God, for who is able to straighten what He has bent? In the day of prosperity be happy, but in the day of adversity consider -- God has made the one as well as the other so that man may not discover anything that will be after him (Eccl. 7:13-14).

I recently used this reference in a post about the sovereignty of God when things are unpleasant. It says that God makes both days of prosperity and days of adversity. In the first we are to be happy. In the second we are to take it from the hand of God. All well and good.

I wanted to look at the last phrase. It gives, from Solomon's perspective, the reason why God gives both prosperity and adversity: "So that man may not discover anything that will be after him." What an interesting reason! Now, I'm quite sure there are a host of other reasons. I don't suppose that Solomon intended "This is the only reason God does this." But it is a reason. The reason is so you won't know tomorrow what God intends to do.

Lots of people like to guess when bad things happen. Job's friends in the book of Job were very happy to offer advice as to why bad things happened to Job, for instance, and they represent a fairly common approach. "Bad things happen to bad people; good things happen to good people." And it's just not true. People like to guess "It's a judgment from God." And it may or may not be true. It's one of the popular methods of determining success, too. "If things don't work out, it must mean that you're not doing what God wanted." Again, perhaps true and perhaps not. Specifically what Solomon claims here is that you cannot know. God does what He does -- pleasant or unpleasant -- for His own good reasons and we're not wise to try to guess at what that is without specific instructions to do so.

So, what's the alternative? If we can't guess, "This is why God did what He did when that unpleasant thing happened", how are we to respond? We are to respond as Jeremiah did: "This I recall to my mind, Therefore I have hope. The LORD'S lovingkindnesses indeed never cease, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; Great is Your faithfulness. 'The LORD is my portion,' says my soul, 'Therefore I have hope in Him'" (Lam 3:21-24). Hope in the Lord and His character, not in better circumstances. It's a much more stable place to be because we "may not discover anything that will be after".