Worth the reminder:

“ADONAI said, ‘Should I hide from Avraham (Abraham) what I am about to do?’” (Genesis 18:17) Do you ever feel like God is hiding something from you? I was contacted by a local rehabilitation agency about possible on-the-job training for a client. My experience with them had always been with mentally or physically challenged people and I thought only for a moment before getting on board. I didn’t ask questions and no other information was given. God had a plan that He knew would not succeed if I had known more. If I had known that the man had just been released from a long prison stay, I would have thought twice. If I had known that he was the local disciplinarian of a gang that stretched far beyond our state, I would have feared to get too close to him and I’m sure I would not have brought him into our shop.

God knew all of those things and more but He chose not to enlighten me for this man had as much a purpose in our lives as we had in his. We gave him the opportunity to learn job skills, the first honest job he ever had, and to work with employers that actually cared about him. He gave us a first-hand look at what gang life really looked like. I learned that even a gang disciplinarian can be honest, caring, and loving. I learned that any phone call might make him coil like a cobra with his head in a strike position.

One day a rival gang called him out to meet in a desolate place after dark. All day I tried to convince him not to go. He assured me he had no choice, and of course, he was going armed. The next day he told me how he got to the bridge and heard my voice begging him not to go–he turned around. It was only one time and in the end, he went back to jail. But, he called me Mom; we had become his family and he was part of ours–an unlikely pairing that only God could have orchestrated. Only by keeping me out of the details was God’s plan able to succeed. What opportunities would you have missed if you had been given all of the details? Thank God for what he does not share with you.