Wednesday, November 28: Zechariah 6 - God calls the shots.

This brief chapter may be the most difficult in the whole of the Bible for me to understand. For the second morning –yes, second morning- I have wondered about both its meaning (I don’t think I understand it yet) and a word from the Lord I can hold onto devotionally. I actually took 2 days to figure out what to write. Yesterday both meaning and devotional thought eluded me and so instead of writing, I prayed and closed my Bible to return to it today.

This was a healthy moment for me in God’s Word. Just because I don’t immediately understand, does not mean I should close the book and give up trying to learn and grow. NO, just the opposite, I am human and will likely never understand it all. But I stay under The Word, letting what I do know and understand guide me as I seek to learn more and more from the Lord.

For the second morning, I labored to understand and/or to receive a piece of encouragement from the Lord in this chapter.

In past years, I would have simply pushed on to the next chapter; writing these chapter by chapter musings forced me to linger…

My determination (wrestling, wondering, searching what commentators have written) paid off as I realized, through verses 5 & 7, that God calls the shots. The angel answered me, "These are the four spirits of heaven, going out from standing in the presence of the Lord of the whole world. …. And he said, "Go throughout the earth!" So they went throughout the earth.

First God is named as the Lord of the Whole World… quite a title. Then we see at His command the horses go throughout the earth.

God calls the shots. When God says it is time for judgment or time for His people to return or whatever He chooses, it happens. God calls the shots.

And I, for one, would rather rest in the merciful and just hands of the Almighty, who calls the shots, than understand all His ways and so reduce God to being little more that a smart human.

Lord God, I surrender my will to You, my ways to You, my life to You… lead, guide, direct, even compel me as You wish. I bow to You who calls the shots, to You who are the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Amen.