During the rain, which began this afternoon and is still going, I ate dinner at a restaurant which is located about 15 minutes from my house if I travel on foot at a casual pace. After dinner, I was debating whether to walk home or catch a tram. I’m still not 100% why, but I chose to walk. As I was walking, a Bible verse I read this week came into my head: “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.” (Psalm 19:1) I was struck by the fact that this soft rain that kept falling on me was God’s way of showing a portion of who He is to the world. The spots of water all over my glasses that made me see 100 copies of everything I saw were placed there by God to teach me a lesson about how great He is.
But my realization didn’t stop there. As I considered these things, another passage that has been blowing me away lately came to mind:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. –Ephesians 1:3-6
The fact that God chose us in Him before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before Him, that in a “time” before time existed the eternal God of heaven and earth looked out over the span of time—seeing every human action which would ever occur, knowing intimately every person who would ever walk the planet, knowing the exact skill set of everyone ever, knowing exactly when and how I would fail, knowing exactly when and how I would fail Him—and out of all the people who existed in all the ages in the entire history of the earth, He chose me as one of those who would be holy and blameless before Him blew me away. That before I existed, before the earth existed, before time existed, God loved me; God predestined me for the adoption as His son based on no merit of my own. That it was His will, not something forced upon Him. That He desired it. And that He was reminding me of this through an unseasonal soft rainstorm in a cool December night. It made me remember the wonder of the God I serve. The heavens declared the glory of God tonight.
