A Throne That Was Never Ours
There is a peculiar restlessness in the human heart. We long to hold the map, to chart the course, to feel beneath our fingers the reassuring weight of the wheel. From early childhood we grasp at the illusion that if only we arrange things carefully enough, speak clearly enough, labor diligently enough, then life will proceed according to our design. We call this responsibility. We call it prudence. Often it is simply our fear of being carried where we did not intend to go.
Yet the longer one lives, the more he discovers that his hands are far smaller than he imagined.
A man may plan his education and find himself called elsewhere. He may cultivate friendships and watch them drift like leaves upon a current he cannot see. He may tend his health with vigilance and still feel weakness creep into his bones. We arrange our days with ink and calendar, yet the Lord writes in a script far more enduring.
There is something in us that resists this. We are uneasy passengers. We prefer to believe we are captains.
We speak of taking control of our lives as though life were a machine waiting for our competent touch. We forget that our very breath is received. We do not command the sun to rise. We do not instruct our hearts to beat through the night. We close our eyes in sleep and surrender ourselves each evening to a darkness that we do not govern. If God withdrew His sustaining will for a single instant, all that we cling to would vanish like mist at dawn.
And yet this truth need not terrify us.
The sea is vast. The waves rise without consulting us. Storms gather beyond the horizon of our sight. If we were truly left to steer alone, despair would be the only honest response. Our judgments are partial. Our vision is short. We are swayed by appetite, by pride, by wounds that we carry quietly. Even our virtues are fragile things.
Still, beneath the shifting surface of events, there is a steadiness that is deeper than the ocean floor.
God governs all things with a wisdom that neither hurries nor falters. His providence does not resemble our anxious management. He does not scramble to correct unforeseen errors. There are no unforeseen errors for Him. Every sparrow’s fall, every kingdom’s rise, every hidden prayer whispered in a lonely room is gathered into His eternal knowledge. What appears to us as accident is woven into a pattern too intricate for our present sight.
This does not mean that our choices are meaningless. We are not puppets jerked about by invisible strings. Our freedom is real and weighty. It is precisely because our freedom matters that surrender is so difficult. We can resist. We can cling to the wheel with white knuckles and protest the direction of the wind.
But we cannot command the wind.
There is a great difference between action and control. We are called to act. We are commanded to love, to work, to repent, to forgive. We are summoned into the drama of history as participants. Yet control in its absolute sense belongs to God alone. When we attempt to seize it, we carry a burden too heavy for our shoulders. Collapse becomes certain.
How much of our anxiety springs from this confusion? We fret over outcomes that lie beyond our reach. We replay conversations in our minds, wishing we could alter words already spoken. We scan the future for dangers and attempt to construct safeguards against every conceivable sorrow. We imagine that vigilance will grant us mastery.
Instead it often robs us of peace.
There is a gentler posture available to the soul. It is the posture of trust. Trust does not require passivity. It requires humility. It is the quiet acknowledgment that the One who orders the galaxies also orders the hidden details of my life. The same hand that traces the path of the stars traces the path of my days.
When a ship passes through uncertain waters, the crew may feel the swell and hear the groan of timber. They may not understand the charts or the calculations. Yet if they believe that the one guiding them is skilled and attentive, their fear subsides. They can labor at their stations without demanding to see the entire horizon.
So it is with us. God’s governance is neither careless nor cruel. His goodness is not sentimental softness. It is a firm and unwavering commitment to our ultimate flourishing, which often unfolds through circumstances we would never have chosen. He sees beyond the present discomfort toward an end that surpasses our imagination.
There are moments when His direction leads through fog. We strain our eyes and perceive nothing but grey. In such seasons we are tempted to doubt that there is any direction at all. Yet faith insists that obscurity does not negate guidance. The absence of clarity does not imply the absence of care.
Consider how little of your life has truly been within your command. The family into which you were born, the era in which you arrived, the talents you possess, the limitations that humble you. Even the desires that stir within you are not self created. They arise, mysterious and insistent, drawing you toward goods you did not invent.
And yet here you are, sustained through years of change, carried through dangers you perhaps never recognized. There have been crossroads where a single decision altered the landscape of your life. There have been sorrows that felt unbearable at the time, which later revealed unexpected fruit. Threaded through it all is a constancy that cannot be explained by chance alone.
To accept God’s control over all things is not to abandon effort. It is to relinquish the fantasy that everything depends upon you. It is to labor faithfully while acknowledging that the harvest belongs to Another.
In the end, peace comes when we cease striving to occupy a throne that was never ours. Creation does not require our management. It requires our fidelity.
The steady hand that guides all things is not our own. And that is very good indeed.
God is a good pilot (Verne, Clipper of the Clouds)
