God's Wisdom and Ours

A few minutes after Micah died, I was ready to leave the hospital room in which we held Micah as he died. But before we left, my brother stopped all of us and asked if he could read from scripture.

He read from Romans 11,
“Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgements and how inscrutable are his ways!
For who has known the mind of the Lord,
Or who has been his counselor?
Or who has given a gift to him
That he might be repaid?
For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.” Romans 11:33-36.

In those moments following Micah’s death, I was filled with many questions for God. Why did He allow Micah to fall from the chair? Why did He allow the pea to go into his lungs when he fell? Why did He allow Micah’s airway to be blocked when, four days later, Micah tried to cough up the pea? We didn’t have the answer then, nor do we have answers to our questions now.

But God does. God’s purposes, though often unknown to us, are being worked out in and through our lives to form a story far more redeeming than any novel ever written by a human hand. While I cannot use my feeble mind to reach to touch even the beginning of God’s infinite wisdom, we know that God is good, and that He is working together all things for good for those who are called according to His purpose. Romans 8:28.

My brother’s recitation of this passage was a helpful reminder to me at that moment that God is good, even when I could not understand what He is doing through Micah’s death. God, who requires no counsel outside of Himself, whose wisdom is infinite and eternal, decided that the most loving act for us and for our Micah was to take him home. In God’s goodness and wisdom we needed to rest, and that passage provided me assurance that just because I could not understand what God was accomplishing does not mean that He is not, even now, using Micah’s death to accomplish His purposes.