When You Can’t Trace His Hand, Trust His Heart — Carol McLeod Ministries
What moves you? What fills your heart with the echoes of eternity?
The lyrics of songs … and majestic melodies … have always moved my heart in deep and profound ways.
I recall, as a little girl, watching The King Family Christmas Special and hearing “The Christmas Song” for the very first time.
It made my heart ache with deep joy.
I was probably only 7 or 8 years old that December, and it was the first time that the beauty of lyrics and melody made me long for more.
The voices of a 40-member family of four generations … blended in deep and rich harmonies … made the tears roll down my little girl cheeks.
I knew in that moment that some things are just so beautiful that they hurt.
Beauty can often cause your heart to ache with a sweet joy.
When I was a young mom, I heard a song in a church cantata that moved me with the same type of deep and eternal beauty.
During that season of my life, I was in a daily battle with depression … most days, my soul was a hollow vacuum of nothingness.
I went to church the Sunday before Christmas and was content to sit near the back … even though my husband was the pastor.
The cantata that our small church was performing attracted mothers and fathers … grandfathers and grandmothers … aunts and uncles … and neighbors. It seemed as if our entire small town had turned out to hear our inadequate, woefully off-pitch choir sing their Christmas hearts out.
Then, the choir director turned around and faced the audience.
I felt like she was looking right at me.
She lifted the microphone to her lips … opened her mouth … closed her eyes … and sang in a rich contralto that filled the empty caverns of my heart:
“God is too wise to be mistaken
God is too good to be unkind
So when you don’t understand,
When you don’t see His plan,
When you can’t trace His hand,
Trust His heart.” – Babbie Mason
God spoke to me through the lyrics of that song … and I was never the same again.
The Baby in the manger chose to touch my weary, broken soul through words set to music.
These words have become more than lyrics to me … they have become solid theology.
They have become a dynamic and powerful prayer.
They have become a reminder in the darkest moments of my life that I can trust a God who is good and wise.
“God is too wise to be mistaken …”
My soul can rest in the assurance that God really is too wise to be mistaken.
God is never wrong … not one time.
I never know better than He does … never.
His wisdom never contradicts His Word … and I rest there … in that safe place of trusting an all-wise God.
God’s wisdom never changes because God never changes.
His mind and His heart toward His children thousands of years ago is still His mind and His heart toward His children today.
If the ache of your heart is to know the wisdom of God, then you must read and agree with His Word.
If you read His Word … and then question it or doubt it … then you really don’t believe that God is too wise to be mistaken.
When my mind and my circumstances tempt me to question the wisdom of God, I am persuaded to come back to a place of trust when I read my Bible.
David, the psalmist and the giant-killer, penned these words:
“And those who know Your name will put their trust in You,
For You, O Lord, have not forsaken those who seek You.” – Psalm 9:10
God’s wisdom is backed up by God’s power.
If He were only wise, with no power by which to move, then His wisdom would have a lesser effect upon our human lives.
But because not only is He the God of all wisdom, but also is He the God of supreme and eternal power, I know that His hand always moves with the wisdom of His Name.
“God is too good to be unkind …”
When I read those words, I weep.
My heart melts within me at the goodness of the God whom I love and serve.
There is no unkindness in God.
Everything that comes into my life is filtered through the wisdom, the power, and the goodness of God.
Anything that God is, He is that attribute eternally.
God is eternally and infinitely good.
There is not one atom or cell of cruelty or unkindness in God.
God has never had a bad thought about you or has ever been tempted to be mean to you.
He is infinitely and lavishly good.
He is powerfully loving and wisely kind.
“So when you don’t understand,
When you can’t see His plan …”
How many times has THAT happened in your life?!
You don’t understand what God is doing … you can’t see His fingerprint in the dailyness of your day … you don’t hear His voice or see the handwriting on the wall.
You scream out for understanding … and He is silent.
You demand an explanation from heaven’s heart, and you get nothing. Absolutely nothing.
You wonder whether He is in control or not …
What do you do at that lonely moment? Is there a place of peace for your aching soul to rest in?
“When you can’t trace His hand … trust His heart.”
There it is. That is the answer. That is solid theology and eternal truth.
This is what you do at that confusing, lonely moment when you wonder where He is … you trust.
You trust His heart.
You trust His wisdom and His power.
You trust His goodness that is never unkind.
You trust that He is enough to carry you through.
You trust the same God whom David trusted.
You get on your face, open the Bible, and trust.
Thanks for listening to my heart this week. As you know by now, my heart is truly not a perfect heart, but it is a heart that is filled to overflowing with gratitude for the life I have been given and for the people who walk with me. And it continues to be a heart that is relentlessly chasing after God and all that He is.
