God's Crooked Ways

Consider the work of God: for who can make that straight, which He has made crooked?  Ecclesiastes 7:13

Whenever God presents Himself in the present order of the material universe, He appears to go crooked, that is, crooked to our reason; we cannot understand Him. 

God allows things in the cosmic world which are a deflection from the straight path; they do not continue in the straight simple line my mind tells me they ought to take.

What man finds it easy to explain actual facts as he sees them to-day in connection with his belief in God? Job is the expression of a man who suffered in this way. 

In theory God appears to be just and kind, but in actual life things seem to flatly contradict His justice and kindness.

If we try and work things out on the line of intellect, on a theory of goodness or justice, we will always find the crookedness. 

There is something wrong at the basis of things, and it cannot be put right until another inevitable thing happens. 

The thing to do is to place our faith in God and attain morally in the midst of things, crooked as they appear. 

Watch the inevitable things, and don’t try to work out the riddle of the universe.

- Adapted from Oswald Chambers' The Shade of His Hand