Fortune or Misfortune?
By Abraham Israel
Soon after, some heathen and ungodly neighbors from the nearby village visited, offering their condolences and said, "What a shame. Now your only horse is gone. How unfortunate you are!. You must be very sad. How will you live, work the land, and prosper?" The farmer replied: "Who knows? We shall see".
Two days later the old horse came back now rejuvenated after meandering in the mountainsides while eating the wild grasses. He came back with twelve new younger and healthy horses which followed the old horse into the corral.
Word got out in the village of the old farmer's good fortune and it wasn't long before people stopped by to congratulate the farmer on his good luck. "How fortunate you are!" they exclaimed. You must be very happy!" Again, the farmer softly said, "Who knows? We shall see."
At daybreak on the next morning, the farmer's only son set off to attempt to train the new wild horses, but the farmer's son was thrown to the ground and broke his leg. One by one villagers arrived during the day to bemoan the farmer's latest misfortune. "Oh, what a tragedy! Your son won't be able to help you farm with a broken leg. You'll have to do all the work yourself, How will you survive? You must be very sad". they said. Calmly going about his usual business the farmer answered, "Who knows? We shall see"
Several days later a war broke out. The Emperor's men arrived in the village demanding that young men come with them to be conscripted into the Emperor's army. As it happened the farmer's son was deemed unfit because of his broken leg. "What very good fortune you have!!" the villagers exclaimed as their own young sons were marched away. "You must be very happy." "Who knows? We shall see!", replied the old farmer as he headed off to work his field alone.
As time went on the broken leg healed but the son was left with a slight limp. Again the neighbors came to pay their condolences. "Oh what bad luck. Too bad for you"! But the old farmer simply replied; "Who knows? We shall see."
As it turned out the other young village boys had died in the war and the old farmer and his son were the only able bodied men capable of working the village lands. The old farmer became wealthy and was very generous to the villagers. They said: "Oh how fortunate we are, you must be very happy", to which the old farmer with thanksgiving and praise in his heart replied, "Who knows? We shall see what God will do through this too!," because he believed in a God who is sovereign and providential to take care of him and his son and everyone around him to fulfill His bigger purpose.
Have you realized God has a bigger plan and a purpose for you individually, beyond what happens or doesn't happen to you at any particular point of time according to the perceived natural expectation? Have God kind of faith that believes all things are possible in partnership wtih Him.
To Stop The Trigger Or Allow A Person To Die
Thus hearing the story leads us to a man who asked, "Should not a good and loving God stop a wicked man from shooting the innocent by making the trigger not to work in the gun?"
Sure he can, but if God were to do that to stop the trigger, it means that God has broken his own law of giving man the free will and giving a moral obligation to act responsibly in receiving love and guidance from him through his own choice or act by the wisdom of his own self and thus be entangled in to bondage to evil that influences him without Him.
So God has a bigger picture of goodness within his plan, where every humans will be judged by God according to the good and bad he has done in his own life and living.
God the Father and His only begotten Son Jesus Christ is full of surprises to all humanity by making them look up to Him to see and understand about how He can hide some goodness within what seem to be bad at a particular moment of time.
The Cross of Christ seemed to be bad to all righteous humans after all, but little did anybody on earth or in heaven realize the hidden mystery of God's goodness hidden through it. When Jesus Christ died vicariously on the Cross, according to God He took the sin of the whole humanity and thus God was able to righteously justify His people and be just at the same time as a holy and righteous God (Rom 3:26). Jesus Christ after he rose from the dead justifying the people of faith from their sins, took those who believed God as good through their faith, along with Him to heaven to have a better and a permanent life of rest and peace to live for eternity along with Him for all the sorrows and hardships they faced in their own lives.
So the earthly life is a small picture of how God is able to bring something good out of the bad, evil and ugly happenings of the earth in the present time, that is run in by majority who live by self without God, and let evil influence them to bring darkness and sadness in their own lives and in the lives of others. So the bottom line that God conveys to those skeptics is, God has a better plan to execute even through the evil that prevails through the selfishness of man and the spiritual powers of darkness that influences them.
So as a result, God doesn't stop the trigger and thus allows a man to die sometimes, because He has something better to bring, that is Divine justice. Other times, God stops a trigger when a person believes his power and doesn't allow a man to die, because He has something better to bring through it all, sovereign protection. In short, God cannot be pleased without faith working through love (Gal 5:6). So what shall we as mortal humans say to God who is sovereign and is providential to care for all humans impartially? By faith we shall declare, "Who knows? We shall see!"
I mean I do not say that we should skeptically look towards God's doing passively and let things happen without our own participation to influence the result positively to make a difference, instead we must try our best to participate in God's program positively by faith and we must continue to have faith in God and His goodness to turn the bad things in to something good for us, even when unexpectedly bad thing happen to us as we believe His power, glory and awesomeness in pulling the impossible to make it become possible (Luke 18:27; Gen 50:20; Rom 8:28).
What Is The Bottom Line We Learn?
Every event is part of a larger whole that God has planned to work out for our own good. The meaning and nature of any event, what is judged to be "good" or "bad," is only relative to the changing circumstances and conditions surrounding it. How often do we take into consideration the "Whole" picture that God projects and wants us to believe in it by taking part in it to see a positive result through it all by faith to please God (Heb 11:6)?
Fundamentally, people become stuck or stagnant by closing down their hearts, and thinking only logically through their natural mind – ceasing to listen to their spiritual mind that should instead reign over the soul mind and look for God's potential guidance through his Word and the Spirit which reveals his will for each person individually. Often people learn to resist change by utilizing the intellect, will power, and ego, trying to control, suppress/repress the spiritual man within who is born anew in Christ Jesus, and is inclined to hear His voice and guidance in each particular circumstances. The Bible reveals that a double minded soulish man, is always unstable in all his ways to question God's wisdom when things doesn't go well in any particular circumstances (Jam 1:8). But a man of wisdom who receives wisdom from God avoids changing his mind according to the changing circumstances but stands strong in faith believing God is able to work out something good and wonderful and eternal out of each situation that seems impossible to solve through in the natural by human intervention alone (Jam 1:2-5, 6, 7, 8). Man's confused soulish mind creates a prison, inner war, tension, and a conflict which impedes, confines, and restricts his greater expression of faith and liberty.
Rather human beings change for the good within their character and evolve to become men and women of God kind of faith (Mark 11:22), by renewing their mind by the Word of God and opening the heart to God' s Spirit guidance within their spirit (Eph 4:23-24; 2 Cor 7:1; Rom 6:4; 7:6; 12:2) – thus activating the steps of faith that makes impossible possible (Rom 4:12). It can be said that we change our hearts by renewing our heads with the word of God, that actually opens the heart to God having two way communication with us. When God leads the heart, there comes a reality of knowing what is to take place in our lives seemingly changing situations to hold on to a deeper REALITY OF FAITH than mere conceptual relativism which does not include the reality of eternal, absolute and unchanging moral truth of God and obligation of man to adhere to it, so that humans may see God work in goodness and turn even the bad things to become good for us which is much more intelligent and functional to keep us in the positive way of life that God provides.
What Have We Finally Learnt Through The Story Of Farmer And His Son?
This classic story of the farmer's son is not one of passivity, but rather about how to free from the limited results of logical efforts – conditional happiness and unhappiness stemming from ignorance of doubt in the Word of God which is the obstructed vision seeing the small picture devoid of greater good that God achieves through the temporary uneasiness of life and its primary causes of self and evil that promotes it. Whatever bothers us the most are the things we have to let go of in to the hands of God (Php 4:6-7) – because all turbulence in our soul are a reflections of an inner conflict with out God thoughts of faith involved in it. All of our problems—even our health problems—are related to disturbances of our emotions that become negatively set or anchored in the wrong place of storm instead of being set positively in the place of calm where God is present in our spiritual mind which sees the bigger picture that God is bringing through it all for our own eternal good and temporally better quality of heavenly living on earth.
If we could see the Farmer, he has set his mind firmly not on what people expressed based on what seemingly happened to him or his son or belongings, but rather on the good thing that God might work through it all for His glory and their own benefit. The villagers worked by their soulish heart, the Father and Son looked to something good out of what seemed to be bad that happened at any particular time. Thus by faith the Farmer and His Son were able to operate out of the goodness of God from the view point of heaven. This was the same way Father God and Jesus Christ his only begotten Son operated when He was present on earth two thousand years ago, looking forward to how God will sovereignly work through all seemingly evil and selfish works of humans, and turn it in to something good for the whole humanity. God did it without fail, inspite of the great price paid by His Son on the Cross of Calvary!
The villagers are those who were double-minded and acted by their experiential soul mind, which operates by what it knows by what it has experienced thus far in short-sightedness. But the faith filled mind sees afar in to the end result of what is to come, and then rejoices in it as the reality of the present rather than a illusion of the future that might happen. So the spiritual mind of faith overcomes the soulish mind of self, when we look towards God in awe, reverence and respect which is the true worship and fear of God that God expects from us.
When we trust God and worship Him for who He is inspite of the situation, God makes a turn around in fortunes to show to us what He can do with what seems impossible to our natural mind, and make it possible as He will be pleased with who we are and what we have become through our faith!
Every situations of life, whether it is evil or good in our natural eyes, it becomes a fortune or misfortune based on which mind we will operate in, whether spiritual mind that operates by faith that believes that God does turn all things bad in to good for us, and good in to better for us, and better to become best for us, or a skeptical mind that operates by doubt and logical reasoning that always is cynical enough to expect sometimes the worst and sometimes the best to happen because of a mind that is set on good luck and bad luck rather than a God who works together for our own good. The villagers operated by doubtful experiential reasoning, while the Farmer and the Son operated by faith in a God who has the power to work both the good and the bad to become only something that is good and nothing less than that. Praise the Lord!
Learn to live by faith and please God through operating in the higher nature of the spiritual mind within you, and shun the doubt that makes the mind operate in the lower nature of the soul by calling the happening around us as luck that happens randomly, rather than realising the consequential reality of God working behind it.
Be a bold man and woman of faith to declare boldly to the critics saying, "Who knows? We shall see what God will do through this too". At the end you will prevail and they will only wail for their doubt and unbelief.
Much Blessings....
"In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don't." — Blaise Pascal
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