JohnCalvinYoung.com

I am sit­ting here in the final throes of incip­i­ent laptop-itis. The Lord has pro­vided the funds through my work this sum­mer to pur­chase a new lap­top to replace my ail­ing one. I found a really nice sys­tem on eBay (details later) and have my bid in to win it. With 5 min­utes to go. With nobody else bid­ding atm. With me about to fid­get to death sit­ting in front of my brother’s desk­top, my dead cur­rent lap­top on the desk. 1 minute 35 sec­onds to go…

It is at times like these that I am glad to be a Calvinist–it is so com­fort­ing. Most peo­ple don’t under­stand this–they think that to believe that the Lord knows and con­trols the future means that they are chained to fate. It’s not that way. From our side, we see our free will. From the Lord’s, though, out­side of time and space, he can see and touch our futures in a way we can only imag­ine. So it’s com­fort­ing. He knows and cares whether or not I win the item I want. It’s nice to think some­times in the uncer­tainty that the choice or out­come we worry about is a known fact in the future–and God knows. It is com­fort­ing to have a full view of God’s sov­er­eignty in a sit­u­a­tion like this–like when you get out­bid at 24 sec­onds to go.

Game over. You didn’t win. But the Lord knows, and he may also know if that com­puter was a lemon, the seller would cheat you, or just that you ought to buy some­thing else. It’s far from being restricting–it’s free­ing to know that the King of all Kings, the Creator of Time and Space, the Owner of the cat­tle on a thou­sand hills, has my well-being in mind–I don’t have to worry.

In His Service,
John Calvin Young