This is true in things that seem small, like waiting on the runway at DFW for two hours when I want to be somewhere else. I don't even know to this day why it happened. I don't know what the particular mercy of God in that was. It is also true in big things, as recently when our daughter Carey's friend was driving her car towards a drunk driver coming the other way and at the last minute she saved her life and my daughter's by flicking her wrist and moving the car out of his way. And in God's providence their car was totaled as it rammed against the guardrail, and in the God's providence two 16-year-old girls walked away from the car, and in God's providence two 16-year-old girls are very sober about the power of automobiles now.

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If, at the last minute, God caused the flick of a wrist to avoid a head-on collision, then it is also God's providential care that He bent all of history toward the purpose that He would not spare His own Son, but instead, cause Him to have a head-on collision with wickedness and death. God's providence extends to the smallest of things, and God's providence extends to the most massive thing of all-the providential concurrence of God's working out His purposes even through the worst that men could do to His own Son. This is told to us in Acts 2:23: "This Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men."

God designed it, God intended it, God meant for His Son to go to the cross for us. But it happened at the hand of wicked people. Jonathan Edwards describes providence this way, "God not only does His people good, He is His people's good."

God is our good in the gospel of His Son. He turned the wickedness of men on its ear by making His Son's death the fullest expression of His providential care for us, and He did it concurrently with the desires and actions of the men and women who were involved. Who killed Jesus Christ? Did Judas do it for money? Did Pilate do it for power? Did the Pharisees do it for envy? Yes, but that's not the whole story. The primary actor in the death of Jesus for you was His Father, for it was not Judas who killed Jesus for money, or Pilate for power, or the Pharisees for envy; it was the Father who delivered him up to death out of love — out of love that in His providential intention He wishes to bring to your life today.

In the midst of whatever difficulties and hardships we find ourselves, it is in the good news of the providence of God, who shaped all of history and bent it all for our good in His Son, that He says to us, "I am with you even in this providence you endure today." When we believe that, any presumption flies away: the planning presumption that forgets how quickly things change, the purpose presumption that forgets we are a mist, the position presumption that forgets our dependence upon God. Our presumption blindly grabs the reins of calendars, of our lives, of our tomorrows. His providence brings His presence and care.