The Worst Call Ever?

      From the grandstands it looked like the all-time worst call.  The big-screen replay at the stadium's south end clearly showed a football spinning harmlessly on the turf.  That's an incomplete pass in anybody's rulebook.  Yet the official pointed emphatically in the other direction … interception!  An indignant shower of boos rained over the field.

      But the crowd didn't know that the football on the field was an impostor.  The game ball was safely in the arms of a defensive back from the visiting team.

      It seems that a ball boy on the sideline had been accidentally steam rolled by one of the players.  You can guess what happened next.  Basic laws of physics dictated that the ball boy would relinquish his football.  And that extra ball just happened to squirt out onto the field-right in front of the defender as he intercepted the real ball.  What the crowd thought they saw was dramatically different from reality.

      There's quite a lesson here.  How often do we quickly form an indignant opinion when we perceive some "evil"?  We hastily criticize the government, our teachers, our pastor, our friends, and our enemies.  Yet we do so without having all the facts.  Or we have a distorted view of what really happened.

      We can even do the same thing with God.  We ask tough questions like, "If God is so good, why does He allow evil?”  Or more personally, "Why does God let that arrogant idiot get away with murder while I work hard for nothing?  Great question.  But it betrays our limited view of God's Big Picture.  God understands our questions, even when we may not understand His answers.

      He told the prophet Isaiah, "My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways," declares the Lord, “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts," (Isaiah 55: 8-9).

      God doesn’t discourage our honest questions.  But He does want us to trust Him to bring His perfect plan to completion.

      It's a fact of the human condition that we won't understand everything this side of heaven.  That shouldn't discourage us.  As we trust the God who ultimately reveals the answers to all our questions, we will find joy, hope, and peace … and a better appreciation for the vastness of God's Big Picture.

      Ask yourself these questions … “Do I quickly form opinions and judgments, or do I wait till I have all the facts?  What things seem unfair in my own life?  Have I been silently accusing God of being less than good to me?

      Better to be a fact finder than a faultfinder.