It happened in the kitchen. I was chatting with a friend while preparing supper. He'd stopped in unexpectedly so I was "adding a potato to the pot," so to speak. As I made trips back and forth between the stove and the fridge, I noticed our friend's eyes kept returning to one spot ? the door of the refrigerator. My children were quite young at this time, so that door was covered with a jumble of magnetic numbers and letters. As my friend and I chatted, he slowly made his way toward it. Without skipping a beat in the conversation, he began arranging the magnets. It wasn't until my husband called him into the living room that I realized he had put all the numbers and letters in order, except for the x, y and z. They were hiding on the side of the fridge.

Order is important to us. We function best when things are in place. But sometimes the need to control our environment can go to extremes. Like my friend who could not stand to see that jumble of letters and numbers on my fridge, we demand that things be put right. But sometimes it's the chaos that suits God's purposes. Sometimes God has to hold our hands behind our backs to show us that He is in control.

It happened to me in Papua New Guinea. I heard about a village that was preparing to go to war against another. A man had been attacked and left for dead on the trail, his body hacked by machetes. The deadly cycle of revenge seemed inevitable. My first thought was to send in the troops ? police, missionaries, whoever ? to stop them. But one of the villagers, a man who worked for us, asked us not to intervene, only pray. It felt like God was holding my arms behind my back, but that's all I did. I prayed.

Some time later, that same man came to work, smiling. No ? he was beaming. The man who had been attacked had returned to the village and begged his relatives and friends not to go to war. "Jesus says love your enemies," he told them. They put away their arrows. The witness to the power of God's love was remarkable.

I was humbled. What would have been accomplished if we'd called in "the troops?" Order would have been restored, for a time, but the power of God would not have been evidenced. Lives would not have been changed.

It comes down to letting God be God. The Psalmist says ? "He makes wars to cease to the ends of the earth; he breaks the bow and shatters the spear, he burns the shields with fire. Be still and know that I am God."

When we finished dinner that night, our friend offered to help with the dishes. He kept wandering from the sink to the fridge, looking for the x, y, and z. I didn't tell him where they were.

Marcia Laycock is a pastor's wife and freelance writer living in Alberta Canada.  Her devotional book, The Spur of the Moment has been endorsed by Janette Oke, Phil Callaway and others.  To order, and to view more of Marcia's writing, see her web site - www.vinemarc.com
Copyright Marcia Lee Laycock, 2000, 2001,2002,2003,2004,2005