Wouldn't it be great to have a periscope that allowed you to peer around the corner of today, and see into the future? Personally, I think even an hour or two's foresight would be great, much less a whole day!

Although you and I possess only the gift of cloudy foresight, Jesus is the Son of God. That makes him capable of seeing with 20/20 vision what's coming in the future. This is pretty obvious from what happened as Jesus prepared to celebrate the Last Supper with his disciples. He knew perfectly well what was about to happen. And his love for you and me compelled him to go forward with the plan.

"As they approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage on the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, saying to them, “Go to the village ahead of you, and at once you will find a donkey tied there, with her colt by her. Untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, say that the Lord needs them, and he will send them right away" (Matthew 21:1-3, NIV).

As the Son of God, Jesus not only knows the future, he controls the future. That means nothing can happen to me that is outside of his control and loving purpose for my life.

Maybe you'd rather have some sort of early warning system to see stuff coming for yourself. Would that feel safer to you?

The thing is, we have to be willing to surrender control to him. The person who wants an early warning system is a person who still feels he's better equipped to be behind the wheel than Jesus is.

How about this instead? Move over. Let him provide the answers. Let him assemble the protection. Let him be your solid hope and help. After all, like the Bible says, Jesus is your rock, your fortress, and your deliverer. And nothing that's coming up is going to catch him by surprise.

From David's limited, human perspective, there were always a lot of invisible "moving parts" in his future. David learned to surrender the control to God and simply trust that God's plan for him was good and gracious.

If we do it that way, we don't need the periscope at all.

Because we can do the same as David and say, "I love you, Lord, my strength. The Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer; my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold" (Psalm 18:1-2, NIV).

Our Bible reading for Saturday, January 31, is Job 19:1 - 21:34, Matthew 21:1-17 and Psalm 18:1-6.

Header image based on "Periscope plans" by Connors, CC by 2.0