"God can make good use of all that happens."

“Other things, other blessings, other glories. But never that. Never in all the worlds, that. God can make good use of all that happens. But the loss is real.”

I’m currently reading Perelandra, one of the books in C.S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy. It’s a beautiful book, and if you haven’t read it I really think you should. But by way of synopsis, it’s about a man who visits a sinless, unfallen world with the task of assisting it in staying unfallen.

In the quote above, Ransom, the main character, ponders what would have happened if Adam and Eve hadn’t sinned—but realizes that he can never know. It’s a theme that runs through the book—that we can never know what would have been, but we know that whatever does happen, God uses for His glory. Because Adam and Eve sinned, Christ came in the form of man. Satan bit His heel, but Christ crushed Satan’s head.

Several years ago, a wise woman passed onto me something that her wise mother had once told her: “You can’t make a mistake so big that God can’t either fix it or use it.” God has proven the truth of that statement to me over and over. It’s become perhaps the cornerstone of my theology. And yet, the mistakes are real. The longing for restoration is real. The loss is real.

I feel like what I spend my life doing is trying, with all my might, to ease the pain of that very real loss. On my selfish days that consists of hiding in my room using jazz music to drown out the world. But on my better days, I hug, listen, encourage, bake, and teach, all with the goal of lessening the pain. What I can do isn’t enough. I know that. But if I can lead more people to the truth that God can and will redeem all that happens, I guess it’s worthwhile.