Every now and again, I’ll encounter a complete stranger who will totally challenge my faith and all I claim to believe in. 

On this occasion, it was a mum on the internet who had to bury her 2 month old…

There’s a scripture that often sends shivers down my spine;

“If you faint in the day of adversity, your strength is small” ~ Proverbs 24:10

It’s a harsh reminder to me constantly that it is adversity that tests strength, nothing else.

We read Gods word everyday excited at all the possibilities presented within it. We’re quick to quote it to the friend who is passing through what we pray never to pass through and we sing and recite same words in church, in the company of other believers. But in the end, I’ve learnt personally, that the truest test of what we truly believe is revealed when we’re in the darkest of moments, faced with the exact opposite of those words we once read, shared, believed and sang.

The stranger challenging me today wrote; “Nathan died yesterday at two and a half months old. We got nine days at home with him after 61 days in the NICU. Nine will never feel like enough, but we must accept what is given to us—we were never in control.”

We were never in control.

In the middle of such a horrible predicament, she remembers, admits and pronounces a truth we often forget in the valley, and sometimes on the hilltop too; we are not in control.

I truly dislike how the human mind convinces us of some sort of control that we have. I dislike how society deceives us to think ourselves powerful in what we will, choose and do.

I often struggle with teachings of being so proactive in life so as to avoid certain fates, somewhere deep within me, I marvel at the reality of the true frailty of man; our nothingness, or as the bible puts it, vapour that disappears in thin air or grass that withers away, here today and gone tomorrow.

While I’m not against the teaching of living a proactive life, I fear to teach it in boldness without highlighting the truth that “… it is not to him who wills or runs, but to the one God shows mercy!”

Even within the doctrine of free will, men must know that ultimate control lies in hands beyond ours.

Today’s stranger reminded me never to get consumed in my being or doing that I forget that mercy is what carries me.

In the middle of all of life right now, from the minute happenings in our homes, to the global happenings of the world, we can’t even forget that we are not in control, and never will be.

And truthfully, in my mortality as human, I count this a joy! That while I can wake everyday and make decisions to do or not do, the ultimate control and outcome lies beyond just my decision to do or be, and this leads me straight to my knees, to the throne of mercy, because it’s all we really need, mercy!

May God continue to show us mercy.