No Coincidences in the Kingdom

I am God, and there is no other;
I am God, and there is none like me. I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come. I say, ‘My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please.’ -Isaiah 46:9–10

There are moments when you look back and realize that God was preparing you for something long before you knew it was coming.

One of the things this August trip to South Sudan reminded me of is just how sovereign God is. Nothing is a coincidence to Him.

Abraham and I were meeting for the first time on this trip. Yet, as we talked, we discovered that we are both from Homa Bay County in Kenya and had both previously served in Dadaab Refugee Camp. We may even have been there at the same time. We discovered that we shared a couple of friends and colleagues and yet, somehow, our paths never crossed.

Until August.

As we navigated some of the more challenging parts of the journey to Juba, I found myself remembering my years of traveling by road in Northern Kenya. The long journeys, the uncertainty, the security concerns, and even those times when we would “pasua”, a Swahili term we used for traveling without the heavy police escort, sometimes because the needs on the ground required it.

I remember telling Abraham that perhaps those experiences had been preparing us for this journey. What once felt like difficult and sometimes exhausting experiences were now proving useful in another assignment God had placed before us. In fact, compared to some of our journeys in Northern Kenya, the road to Juba almost felt comfortable!

It made me wonder: How many experiences in our lives do we consider wasted, difficult, or unrelated, when God is actually using them to prepare us for something we cannot yet see?

God knew, long before we did, that Abraham and I would one day serve together at PEER Servants. He knew our paths would eventually cross. He knew the experiences He had allowed us to have would become part of what we carried into this assignment. What are the odds?

Nothing was wasted.

And perhaps that is the encouragement I brought home: trust the sovereignty of God. Trust that He is working even when the pieces do not make sense. Trust that the difficult road may be preparing you for the road ahead. Trust that the people you meet, and even those you don’t meet, may all be part of the grand story that God is writing.

We may not see the whole picture, but He does. No part of our journey is outside His sovereign hands.

Atieno Oketch
Director, Growth Teams
Kenya