The weather people told us it was coming. Ice, wind, and snow could close roads and leave us stranded in our homes without power. They said “cold air damming with a warm nose” made their predictions uncertain.
What happened next was predictable. The governor proclaimed an emergency. The out-of-town utility repair trucks staged nearby. Local officials repeated the warnings and readied road equipment. As for the rest of us, we cleared the store shelves of white goods – milk, bread, and eggs. All of it right on queue.
Each had his or her part to play, but how we went about it was not determined in advance. People have free will, and each responded to the same event in different ways. Even though that’s generally true, it is never a surprise to our Creator. Whatever circumstances and events happen in your world, and regardless how you and others may respond to them, God in His providence has accounted for them in accomplishing His purposes.
How could God know what someone will do in advance? We tend to process events and actions in terms of past, present, and future. Without realizing it, we assume God does the same. But no. He is eternal and stands apart from time. That is how He has “foreknowledge” according to the Bible. That is how Jesus knew Nathanael had been under a fig tree in the past, and Judas would betray Him in the future.
C.S. Lewis explained God’s eternal perspective in creation this way: “Time is probably the mode of our perception. There is … no question of God’s at one point in time adapting the material history of the universe in advance to free acts which you or I are to perform at a later point in time. To Him all the physical events and all the human acts are present in an eternal Now.”
Here is what we can know about God’s creative purposes: “The God who made the world and all things in it … gives to all people life and breath and all things… having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation, that they would seek God, if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and exist” (Acts 17:24-28). God in His providence orders the physical and moral universe so you would seek and find Him. Have you? Those who do respond in repentance, faith, gratitude, love, and awe.
God sees you going to the store, collecting water and candles, and calling for an LP gas delivery. He knew you would before time began. “For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen” (Rom. 11:36).