June 22: Put Your Case in Your Father's Hand

Narrator: Chris Genthree
 •  3 min. read  •  grade level: 7
Listen from:
Let him do what seemeth him good. 1 Samuel 3:18
SA 3:18{Eli spoke these words under the terrible certainty of heavy judgments upon his house, because the Lord had spoken it. But how often God's dear children tremble to say an unreserved "Let Him do what seemeth Him good," though they are under no such shadow of certainly coming events! It is almost easier to say it when a crushing blow has actually fallen, than when there is suspense and uncertainty as to what the Lord may be going to do. There is always more or less of this element of suspense and uncertainty. One can hardly imagine a life in which there are no clouds, little or great, within the horizon, even when the sky is clearest overhead. We hold not a treasure on earth which we are sure of keeping; and we never know whether gain or loss, failure or success, ease or pain, lies before us. And if we were allowed to put our finger on the balance of uncertainties and turn it as we chose, we should be sure to defeat some ultimate aim by securing a nearer one, and prevent some greater good by grasping a lesser. I think if we were permitted to try such an experiment, we should soon grow utterly puzzled and weary, and find ourselves landed in complications of mistakes; and if we had any sense left, we should want to put it all back into our Father's hands, and say, "Let Him do what seemeth Him good," then we should feel relieved and at rest.
Then why not be relieved and at rest at once? For "It is the Lord," who is going to do, we know not what. That is a volume in itself—the Lord who loves you, the Lord who thinks about you and cares for you, the Lord who understands you, the Lord who never makes a mistake, the Lord who spared not His own Son but gave Him up for you! Will you not let Him do what seemeth Him good? Then think what it is you are to let Him do. Something out of your sight, perhaps, but not out of His sight. For the original word in every case is "what is good in His eyes." Those eyes see through and through, and all around and beyond everything. So what is good in His eyes must be absolutely and entirely good, a vast deal better than our best! There is great rest in knowing that He will do what is right, but He crowns the rightness with the goodness; and when we see this, the rest is crowned with gladness. Ought it, then, to be so very hard to say, "Let Him do what seemeth Him good"?
Yet we often vainly plead for a fancied good denied,
What we deemed a pressing need still remaining unsupplied.
Yet from dangers all concealed, thus our wisest Friend doth shield;
No good thing will He deny, God shall all your need supply.