During a week when I learned of a young friend's death, when I sat with a dying friend and her family, and when I experienced a personal family issue, I finished reading The Grace of Catastrophe: When What You Know About God is All You Have" by Jan Winebrenner. As a book reviewer for a group of women at my church, I read a lot of books like this. I never know which book I might be reading at any given time. So, for this to be the book in my hands as I encountered each situation this past week was just another clear-cut sign of God's most perfect timing in all the details of my life. Isn't He amazing and oh, so good?

Tossing out a few quotes from the book:

"There is no place beyond Him for anything to be. God is our environment as the sea is to the fish and air to the bird...the central truth that gives meaning to all other truths and imparts supreme value to {the believer's} life."
(author quoted from A.W. Tozer's Knowledge of the Holy)



"He knows circumstances I'll never be privy to, events and people, present and future, who are all a part of the grand story in which I find myself, and He knows that the end is going to be glorious for His children, even if the chapter I'm living in right now is mysterious and frightening."


"When chaos breaks into the quiet of my life, I can trust God, rest in His omniscience, because nothing is beyond His knowledge; no solution lies beyond His wisdom, no catastrophe ever catches Him by surprise."


"When confusion wreaks havoc in our minds, when pain pulses and fear taunts, we have only two choices: We can trust ourselves to the sovereign rule of the Most High God, or fight and wrangle with Him until we grow bitter and hardhearted. One or the other will be the outcome. These are our only options."



"If we know God, if we know His heart, the choice will come easy."

If our hope is in God, if we believe He is our Father Who loves us enough to give His own Son's blood for us, then how can we doubt that He will see us through our life catastrophes? We are immeasurably important to and loved by Him.
He IS the air that I breathe.

Know His heart.

What grace.