God’s Strange “Life Recipe” For My Brother Dale

Last time we considered how God has a unique recipe for each of our lives. Your life in this world is like God’s mixing bowl for your recipe. The oven where He bakes up your recipe is the whole of your life’s experiences, as they happen providentially one day at a time. The heat in your oven gets adjusted one day at a time as needed, as He continues to add additional ingredients to your bowl (life), according to His eternal, providential, and sovereign plan (purpose).

These considerations are based on our verse from last time – Romans 8:28: “And we know that (or we know how) God causes all things to work together for good (into good) to those who love God”.

Remember the insights from the phrase “We Know” translated from Οἴδαμεν in the perfect tense, where one knows something in the sense of completion and acts as a bridge between the past and the present….to have seen or perceived.

And remember that “We Know” is referring to “πάντα συνεργεῖ” – “all things work together”, which means every single circumstance happening to “the future you” before your conception (during the times of your forefathers), during the time in your mother’s womb, your birth experience, and the “all things” occurring during the rest of your life’s span. “All things” is “All-inclusive” defined as “including everything or comprehensive” (not meaning to be redundant). You cannot pick one single thing out that has happened to you or will happen to you and claim that one thing must have been exempt from God’s “all things”.

This ancient quote attributed to Aristotle, says “The whole is greater than the sum of the parts”. Thomas Wolfe once said that, “We are the sum of all the moments in our lives - all that is ours is in them: we cannot escape it or conceal it.” Carlos Wallace said, “Each of our lives is the sum of its parts. No ONE individual is the driving force. And no one person can stall its progression”.

God’s “life recipe” for some people is hard to understand, looking from the outside in, with our finite perspective. In light of this, I would like to share how God’s recipe for life in the lives of three different people would qualify as hard to grasp.

My younger brother Dale (2nd born out of 3) is my first reference. As I shared last time, my mother caught a virus during her pregnancy with Dale. The virus ended up doing permanent damage to his brain and really his whole body. She knew she had come down with some kind of virus during the time she carried him to term, but had no idea what effects it had or did not have on Dale. If doctors back then would have had all of the prenatal testing available now, they probably would have done everything they could to encourage her to get an abortion….but thank God they did not!

Now, these circumstances were not my mother’s fault.
These circumstances were not my father’s fault.
These circumstances were not the fault of any doctor or hospital.
These circumstances were allowed by God for His own eternal purposes.

In John 9:1-3, Jesus saw a man blind from birth. So, His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind? Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.

Such is Dale’s case. When he was born, half of his face was discolored, which was obvious. What was not so obvious were all the other problems caused by the virus. These would become evident over time. The specialists then told my parents Dale would most likely die before he reached the age of five (5). That did not happen. He lived to be 39 and grew to 6’1”, even though you could not see that unless he was laid out flat and stretched to his full height. He could never talk intelligently and could not walk without being held up. Here is a picture of Dale in his 30’s.

Of course he had his own unique personality, loved being with people, and he tried to communicate, but things just would not work. When he needed something or wanted something and he could not make someone understand, he would sometimes bite them…but it was not out of meanness…just frustration. His entire 39 years was spent either lying in a bed or sitting in a wheelchair. He hardly ever made it off the property where they took care of him, although the staff would regularly take him outside to feel the different kinds of weather and they did have an occasional field trip. They took great care of him and my mother was able to get a good full-time job at the facility and she got to see him every day at work. So, everyone made the most if it.

Now I would like see if you can envision yourself in Dale’s life or someone else like Dale. Many people throughout history have experienced similar kinds of lives, due to sickness, disease, or accidents, but unless you have known or been close to someone like this, it can be really hard to grasp what these people (and those who care for them) go through. If strangers looked at someone like Dale, it would have been so easy for them to think to themselves how glad they are (were), that they did not have to live a life like that…spend years and years confined to a bed or wheelchair without being to talk or walk or take care of yourself…no education, no marriage, no children or grandchildren, no travel and seeing the sights of the world.

To phrase Dale’s life in context of being God’s special and unique recipe and his world as being the divine mixing bowl God placed him in and all of those things he experienced day by day - as God’s divine oven to bring forth that eternal culinary delight – any of us could struggle to see that deeply into his heart and soul. How many of us would say, “Oh – I wish could trade places with Dale”? I wish God’s recipe for my life would have been like Dale’s!” Or reverting back to our study of how we are God’s poema (“workmanship” in Ephesians 2:8-10), how many of us would say, “Oh – I wish God’s poem for my life would have read like Dale’s poem”?

Only our Sovereign Creator & God can see Dale’s (and others like him) body, soul, and spirit in completion. If anyone could go to heaven for a short time and visit with Dale (and others like him), you would see one happy, joyful, complete, and blessed person admiring/worshipping Jesus Christ in spirit and truth. God’s culinary delight in Dales’ body, soul, and spirit will be on display for the rest of eternity. We will face each other and then embrace each other and rejoice and then worship, worship, worship – along with my other brother Keith, who became a Christian in his 20’s and died at 55!!!
So remember Romans 8:28 in your life “And how you know that (or how) God causes all things to work together for good (into good) for you - as you keep loving God, as He continues to fulfill His purpose(s) for you”. And you could let God know how grateful you are for His divine recipe for your life and that you don’t want to trade places with anyone else in the world (and miss out on all that He is doing for you and in you).

Ecclesiastes 11:5: As you do not know the way the spirit comes to the bones in the womb of a woman with child, so you do not know the work of God who makes everything.

Romans 11:33: Oh, how great are the riches of God’s wisdom and knowledge! How hard it is for us to understand His decisions and His ways!

Job 38:4: Where were you Job when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding.

Closing Prayer from Alicia Bruxvoort

Dear Lord Jesus,
You will never fit into my finite box of human understanding. But You’ll always fulfill my infinite need for a Savior. Give me faith to offer You praise even when I don’t understand Your ways.
In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

Next week, we will look at another incredible example of God’s creativity in the life of a
human being chosen to demonstrate His love and grace in unusual ways.

Yours in Christ,
Gene