a safety net of grace

It is often alleged that belief in God’s foreordination (predestination) and ultimate reconciliation makes a person complacent or fatalistic.
Why bother to act if the outcome is already fixed?

But that is demonstrably a caricature.
Fatalism speaks of blind fate (fatal).
The Bible, on the other hand, speaks of a God who, as Father, arranges all things—purposefully and with a view to a good outcome.
That does not paralyze, but awakens trust.

Joseph knew—ever since the dreams he had received from God as a teenager—that God would grant him dominion.
Did that conviction make him passive because he knew he would end up on the throne anyway?
On the contrary. It gave him strength and courage to take responsibility and to persevere, even in adversity.

Faith in God’s plan functions like a safety net.
A child only dares to climb high when it knows something is underneath.
Falling may not be the intention, but the awareness that it is never fatal brings peace.
It is precisely the knowledge that the end is guaranteed to be good that brings ease—and creates space to act freely and courageously.

Delen: