Sayings
Romans 8:28 ESV
Don’t put your eggs all in one basket.
In today’s business world we’d call not putting all your eggs in one basket diversification.
It’s actually been proven to have some advantages. I like diversification.
Basically it means if you put all your eggs in one basket you’re betting that one plan it will succeed. But, if that plan fails you just took a huge loss. If you do not put all your eggs in one basket one plan of many will succeed.
The Apostle Paul’s scripture in Romans 8 gives us a whole new twist on the eggs in a basket deal.
In Romans 8:28 he tells us, “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.”
I suppose I should tell you that I read Romans 8:28 almost 50 years ago, and I took it as a challenge.
The first thing I noticed all those years ago is that he didn’t say “some things work together for good”. Paul made it clear that it was true in ALL cases!
In the original Greek text the word for ‘all things’ is “panta”. In the Koine Greek it’s an adjective that can mean all, every, or the whole. There’s nothing really questionable about what it means. Paul literally means ALL things.
When I first read it in my late teens and early twenties I took it as a challenge. Surely Paul could not know that absolutely everything will work together for our good when we love God and are called according to God’s purposes.
It cannot be true in absolutely every situation. So for years whenever something happened that seemed (at the time) to look very bad, I intentionally watched how God changed it for good.
I can tell you every every every time I thought something absolutely could NOT be good, in time some thing good happened!
The only thing I’m a little sad about is that I didn’t keep track of every situation. But…but even in that, it will work out for good.
Now folks, for me that scripture was life changing. Why? Well, I’m not a precise calculating planning kind of person. I’m a creative sort.
When my four wild and crazy kids were small I’d get up every morning and say to them, “so what are we going to do today?”
Then we would brainstorm ideas. Somewhere along the line we’d eventually get around to discussing if their dirty clothes pile was full. If it was, then we’d go gather clothes, sort, wash and dry all the clothes.
Being a creative sort of person, I also wasn’t terribly picky about how they folded their clothes.
Since three of my children were hungry boys (two boys when we started doing this) we’d often discuss what we would eat for lunch and dinner. If we decided on peanut butter sandwiches for lunch and hamburgers for dinner we would go to the cupboard and look for the ingredients. We’d also check to see if we had hamburger we could thaw out and we’d check for buns. We we also had to choose a vegetable and we’d check the milk supply. If we didn’t have all the ingredients we’d all jump in the car and go to the store.
I thought that manner of planning our day worked just fine. I do not absolutely have to be the one to make all the decisions, so I appreciated their input.
I thought it was great fun. I liked it that we planned things together. It was a family affair.
In time I learned that other people don’t plan their day the same way we did.
Others thought it was crazy. They made it sound like I needed to make decisions because I was the adult. Did I mention when I started “playing this game” they were toddlers?
Hummm…
So, remember all things good?
Looking back I think being open about what our day would look like helped the kids decide what our day would look like.
It’s no surprise to me that every one of my kids knows how to make good decisions and plan for each day. Because I didn’t order their day for them, they learned how to order their day. They all learned how to do laundry when they were young. They learned how to do meal planning and how to cook.
The same was true when it came to cleaning up a mess or pick up their toys.
See what I’m getting at? All things good.
God used my crazy ways to teach them how to run a house.
Even when they went off to college, they knew how to sort, wash, dry, and fold laundry. They knew how to do meal planning.
When we started doing it I wasn’t thinking it would give them practical skills. I was just trying to make it more fun. And…fun it was. It was fun that God used for good!
Nowadays when something bad happens I close my eyes and thank God for “all things good”. I ask God to show me the good. God is faithful and good to do that!
Spiritual Practice: All things good
Think of a time when something unexpectedly brought good into your life.
In God, Deborah
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