Receiving Peace chapter 1
by Margaret Lehman September 22, 2020
The God of Intention
“I form the light and create darkness.
I make peace and create calamity;
I, the LORD, do all these things.”
Isaiah 45:7 NKJV
Our God acts, moves, creates, takes initiative. And He does none of it half-heartedly.
I look at some situations in my life and feel stuck, powerless, or disappointed. The darkness or calamity moments. Yet, if I read this right, my God was just as intentional in His creation of these scenarios as He was in the ones full of light and peace.
He formed light. With the sound of His breath. And even scientifically we haven’t exhausted the complexities of light and all its principles. Waves. Particles. Color. Energy. We don’t know the half of it.
Might His creation of darkness and calamity and peace be equally complex?
Might His peace be as comprehensive, as colorful, as foundational to the very fabric of the universe as light?
An awareness of His intentionality can change how we interpret our own journeys. Nothing about my story has been without design or without purpose. There is no other God, this chapter in Isaiah keeps reminding us. “From Him and through Him and to Him are all things,” Romans 11:36 explains. He out-strategizes and out-maneuvers every power in heaven and earth. That applies on a cosmic level and on a very personal one. He has orchestrated every scene of my story. With intention.
That brings me peace. A deep, beautiful, and complex peace.
An idea for you:
I took the drawing box and divided it into four quadrants. I labeled them light, darkness, peace, and calamity. Then I began to list some scenes and seasons of my life that fit into these categories, realizing that God had formed them all:
Light—where God showed up clearly, revealed truth, or gave His goodness in an obvious way
Darkness—where I wrestled with a lack or absence of something
Peace—those places where He made things to be right, the way they are supposed to be
Calamity—events and moments where I encountered evil, distress, injury or wrong
What I need to process for each section is this: If my God is intentional and good and loving and right in everything He does, what was He doing here? What have I learned about Him as a result? What did He want to bring about in me through each of these? What are the treasures from my story illustrated in these four quadrants?
Happy treasure hunting!