Because I Said So!

 

“It is the glory of God to conceal a matter.”

—Proverbs 25:2

“Because I said so!” How many times have we heard our mothers’ voices come from our own lips as we repeated those words? Most times we give good reasons when we want children to respond positively to our decisions. However, sometimes when the matter seems either too complicated, because children can’t have the privileged information we have, or because we don’t have either the time or energy to discuss it, this particularly adult response comes from our lips.

Fortunately, we can take some comfort from the fact that God has been known to deal with us in the very same way. In Scripture, we read the stories of Moses, Job, David, Naomi, and others whom God dealt with in mysterious ways.

Joseph, in prison in Egypt, certainly didn’t know what God had in His plan. God had given Joseph dreams about a future in leadership that he had accepted by faith, yet everything seemed to go in the wrong direction for him. Sold by his brothers into Egypt, he had eventually been falsely accused and was now prison! Where did he go wrong? Only years later did he find out God’s awesome and complicated plan to rescue him and the entire nation of Israel.

Sometimes nothing seems to make sense to us. I’m thinking about those times when God requires us to experience failure, pain, or loss; when we have done all we thought God was asking of us and still things don’t turn out well, at least according to our human reasoning.

I love this old hymn. Here are a few verses:

God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform;
He plants His footsteps in the sea,
and rides upon the storm.

Judge not the Lord by feeble sense,
but trust Him for His grace;
Behind a frowning providence
He hides a smiling face.

His purposes will ripen fast,
unfolding every hour;
The bud may have a bitter taste,
but sweet will be the flower.¹

Do we trust God’s love enough to allow Him to keep silent regarding His plan for us? Maybe we can’t understand the complication of the matter. Maybe He hasn’t given us privileged information that He alone has.

But, what we should know, deep in our innermost beings, is that He does not withhold information from us simply because, unlike us, He doesn’t have the energy or time.

The question we must ask ourselves, “Do we trust His authority and His wisdom when He says to us, ‘Because I said so!’”

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1 Cowper, William, God Moves in a Mysterious Way. Public Domain.