Happily Resigned to the Will of God

from Patrick Morley

Volume 331
July 20, 2009

I was in my late 20s. Jim was in his late 50s, maybe older -- young people have a hard time guessing the age of people with gray hair. Jim was a Christian, though not a very appealing one. He was brusque, offered advice when it wasn't requested, and frankly, in my opinion, wasn't very successful which, at the time, I thought was a bad witness.

Nevertheless, my partner and I let Jim put his real estate license with our company because he told us we were the two sharpest young businessman that he had met in a long, long time. How could we resist that?

He was not really part of the core business, so he came and went as he pleased. When he was around, though, he was often thoughtful enough to ask me how things were going.

No matter what the problem was, Jim was like a broken record. He would say,

"The will of God this.…”

“The will of God that….”

“Nothing happens except by the will of God.”

“Well, if it's God's will it will happen. If it is not God's will, it won't."

I was only a baby Christian myself, but I was pretty sure that he was at least a fatalist, and probably a religious nut.

I would later become such a nut myself, but at the time I just thought he was shirking responsibility. In any event, I was pretty sure that I was smarter than Jim and that even if everything was up to God's will, I could convince God what his will needed to be.

It now seems strange that such a minor figure from the early days of my manhood would have left such an indelible impression on me today. Yet I think about Jim's resolute conviction about the will of God all the time.

Yours for changed lives,