We may not understand the story we’re living today. But we haven’t reached the end of the story yet. God’s not finished writing the story of your life – chapter by chapter, it’s still unfolding and God knows exactly how he will divinely guide those chapters to his glorious ending.
Life is so hard to understand. Our highs are often followed by lows. We’re celebrating, then we’re crying. We’re believing for a breakthrough, then we’re battling disappointment. We’re making plans, then everything changes. One minute we’re thanking God for the beautiful story he’s writing, and the next we’re questioning if he’s even holding the pen.
God, where are you in this? Life just got interrupted by an unexpected disaster or disappointment – but what you can’t see is this is the very thing God is using to redirect you. He faithfully protects you from chapters you were never meant to live. His delays are divine. His detours often get you to places you could have never reached on your own.
Yesterday we read about Jesus healing the Roman officer’s faith in the authority of Jesus and as a result, Jesus healed his servant and saved him on his death bed. Yay! Big celebration. We LOVE that! Yay for healing! Yay for happy endings!
But as Jesus continues on his way with his disciples, this celebration party meets a mourning people. A collision of joy and grief meet head on. The life of a Roman soldier’s servant has been saved, but the life of a boy has been lost. All at the same time. And so they collide in God’s mysterious ways.
Let’s read the story – Luke 7, beginning in verse 11, “Soon afterward (remember this is soon after Jesus healed the servant), Jesus went with his disciples to the village of Nain, and a large crowd followed him. (The crowd is following because they’re celebrating the miracle they just saw Jesus perform.) A funeral procession was coming out as he approached the village gate. The young man who had died was a widow’s only son, and a large crowd from the village was with her. When the Lord saw her, his heart overflowed with compassion.”
Understand, this woman hadn’t only lost her child, but she had lost her entire future. She was already a widow, having lost her husband at some point, but now she’s lost her only son. Without a husband or a son, this woman was without hope.
In that culture, her son wasn’t just someone she loved deeply. He was her provision, her protection, and the one who would have cared for her as she grew older. With his death, she was facing a future she could not have imagined and certainly had not planned for. Her life had been interrupted by a heartbreak she could not fix, change, or undo. And it’s funeral day – the final goodbye. Imagine how deep the mourning must have been.
But the procession is interrupted by Jesus. The crowd following Jesus was still in celebration and here the collide with grief and desperation.
This woman wasn’t searching for Jesus, but Jesus found her. He found her in her grief. She wasn’t chasing a miracle. She wasn’t making a bold declaration of faith. She really wasn’t even asking for help. She was simply walking through the most devastating moment of her life and JESUS SAW HER. Yes, he saw her and his heart overflowed with compassion.
Did you know even when you aren’t happy and joyful and believing in the absolute goodness of God, Jesus sees you. He’s moved by your hurt. He’s shaken by your pain. And he wants to do something about this! He wants to interrupt the funeral procession of the thing that’s died within you. The thing that’s too far gone – the thing that’s beyond hope – the thing that just can’t be fixed or changed – Jesus wants to show up right in the middle of that with his interruption.
Let’s keep reading, picking back up in verse 13: “‘Don’t cry!’ he said. Then he walked over to the coffin and touched it, and the bearers stopped. ‘Young man,’ he said, ‘I tell you, get up.’ Then the dead boy sat up and began to talk! And Jesus gave him back to his mother.”
Can you imagine that moment? One minute, she’s walking toward the burial of her only son. The next, she’s watching him sit up alive. One minute, she’s facing a future filled with grief and uncertainty. The next, she’s holding the son she thought she’d lost forever.
The funeral procession was interrupted by the Author of Life.
Now, I want you to see something here. The crowd was still celebrating yesterday’s miracle while this woman was burying her greatest heartbreak. Both stories were unfolding at the same time. One family was rejoicing, another was grieving. One was experiencing the goodness of God in a way they could see, while the other was walking through a darkness they couldn’t understand.
And isn’t that just like life? Sometimes we’re the ones celebrating the miracle, and sometimes we’re the ones following the funeral procession. Sometimes we can see God’s goodness so clearly, and sometimes all we can see is what we’ve lost.
But here’s what I love about Jesus: He is just as present in the funeral procession as he is in the celebration party. Wherever you are, he’s right there with you. He will interrupt your party, he will interrupt your funeral, he will interrupt your joy and he will interrupt your depression. Look for him. Wherever you are – look for him.
Your heartbreak does not make you invisible to him. Your unanswered prayers do not mean he’s stopped caring. And the fact that you cannot yet see how God could possibly bring anything good from your circumstances doesn’t mean he’s absent from your story.
Not every funeral procession turns around in this lifetime. But this story reveals something we can hold on to: Jesus sees our pain, his heart is moved with compassion, and even death itself is not beyond his authority. If God can give this little boy life again, don’t you think God can do the impossible in your situation?
Here’s what hit my heart today – there’s someone listening who is in torment wondering if their loved one made it to Heaven. Before their final breath, you were uncertain of their faith, uncertain of their salvation, uncertain of their eternal destination. You’ve asked God for a sign to be sure, and maybe you’re still waiting on that sign.
Well, I want you to see this story and understand God’s ability to interrupt time and radically change the outcome. If Jesus could breath life back into a boy at his own funeral, don’t you think he also has the ability to extend the final breath of the life of your loved one, reveal himself, and bring them to faith and salvation in a moment of suspended time allowing the soul work that hadn’t yet been done?
Is that beyond God’s ability? I think not! 2 Peter 3:9 says the Lord “is being patient for your sake. He does not want anyone to be destroyed, but wants everyone to repent.”
God can interrupt our life – and he can also interrupt our death. He can be the cause of our celebration and be the source of our strength in our deepest grief.
If your life has been interrupted by something you never would have chosen, don’t believe the lie that God has abandoned you in this chapter. You may not understand what he’s doing. You may not see a way forward. You may even be standing in the middle of something that feels like the end. But the Author of Life is still present in your story.
And sometimes, when you think you’re watching everything come to an end, Jesus is about to show you something about himself you’ve never seen before.
Lord, for my sister listening today who feels like this is just the end – the end of everything worth living for, the end of all she worked for, the end of her dreams, the end of her joy – Show her how you’re working on something she’s never seen before. Interrupt her grief – interrupt her anxiety – interrupt her depression – interrupt her overwhelm with YOUR POWER.
My Bible is filled with all sorts of notes. On the page of Luke 7 where this story of the widow’s son is, I have a yellow sticky note which says “Look up the story of the poet who wrote ‘God Works In Mysterious Ways’.
Today, I actually looked it up! God Works in Mysterious Ways is a song written in the 1700’s by a poet named William Cowper. William was friends with the poet who wrote the song “Amazing Grace”. They’re basically cousin songs.
Williwma Cowper was a talented poet who was plagued with chronic depression. On several different occasions, he tried to end his life. He hired a carriage driver to take him to the river where he planned to drown himself, but the driver was perpetually lost and couldn’t find the river. Then he planned to go to a river again to drown himself, but when he got there, there was no water in the riverbed. And another time, planning to end his life, he gets to the bank of the river and someone is standing in the exact spot where he was going to enter the water.
Over and over again, he was interrupted and his life was saved.
GOD WORKS IN MYSTERIOUS WAYS. Here are the words of his song:
God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform;
He plants His footsteps in the sea
And rides upon the storm.
Deep in unfathomable mines
Of never failing skill
He treasures up His bright designs
And works His sovereign will.
Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take;
The clouds ye so much dread
Are big with mercy and shall break
In blessings on your head.
William Cowper couldn’t see the whole story. In his darkest moments, he couldn’t imagine the hymns he would write, the lives his words would touch, or the hope his story would offer generations of believers. He could only see the pain of the chapter he was living.
And that’s the thing about living in the middle of your story: you can only see what’s happening now. God sees what’s happening next.
You may be frustrated by the interruption, confused by the change of plans, or heartbroken over how a chapter has unfolded. But don’t assume God has abandoned the story just because you don’t understand the plot.
God is still working. He’s still guiding. He’s still redeeming. And even when you can’t trace his hand, you can trust his heart.
Sometimes God’s greatest kindness isn’t letting us get where we were determined to go. Sometimes it’s interrupting our plans because he sees what we cannot see.
Your story isn’t over. God is still writing. And the chapter you’re struggling to understand today may one day become part of the testimony that helps someone else keep believing.
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