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Orchestrated


During my mum's visit, she showed me this photo of her as a kid which I scanned immediately into my computer for fear of losing the one and only copy we have of it.

This must have been 1960 or thereabouts judging from my mum's age in that photo.

The man in the photo is my maternal grandfather. I didn't have much of a relationship with him unfortunately and most of what I know about him are from my mother's accounts.

But taking a long hard look at the picture, there was no way that they could have pictured what would come after.

They have zero clue who my mum was going to marry, they had zero clue that I was to be the firstborn.

But God does. Right at the moment the photo was taken He knows what is going to happen. On Monday I had a dinner with a former elder of the church. Somehow this former elder and this man in the photo is going to create and be a part of a tapestry wounded by God. It is startling as I look at the faces in the photo and they are non the wiser. It is even more startling to know that this was set in motion before the foundation of the world.

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved." (Ephesians 1:3-6)

I gazed and had a long hard look at the picture and it troubled me that I had no say in the picture at all. I have no idea where this picture was taken but it was orchestrated into my heritage and becomes a part of my history whether I liked it or not. We have such a great illusion of control over our own lives when really we don't.

It really should give me comfort and assurance about my future. Resting in His grace and fret less about my future would be a good way to start but alas, my sinful self continues to wrest for that control even with the knowledge that it is an illusion.


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