What is God Doing Today?

God, in the words of Rich Sheridan, is always "working a thousand stories at once." God is active. Any single event - an airplane's departure is delayed by an hour - affects hundreds or thousands of people. God is in the middle of it all.

God is working a million stories at once - or seven billion, to be exact. They all eventually intersect, and so God is also working on one big story. He is spreading His love to all people everywhere. The New Testament tells us that

in all things God works ... from him and through him and for him are all things ... The Spirit searches all things ... With all wisdom and understanding, he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment — to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ ... For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in Jesus, and through him to reconcile to himself all things.

So what exactly is God doing? What are these seven billion little stories, and what is the one big story into which they all belong?

We certainly can't capture all of that in one moment, but here are a few thoughts:

• God is drawing close to people. He wants to be in relationship with them. He speaks to them - in many different ways: through music, through written words, through the beauty of nature, through the kindness of another person. He is showing and manifesting His love for people, implanting His Holy Spirit into them.
• God is drawing people closer to each other: He is forming communities. Families, neighborhoods, colleagues, congregations - humans knowing each other and being known; humans sharing joys and sorrows; humans helping each other in concrete tasks.
• God is transforming people. Training them, disciplining them, educating them - causing them to grow: pouring ever more of His Holy Spirit into them, and bringing the Fruit of the Spirit out of them. Preparing them for tasks; preparing them to serve.
• God is putting people to work. He has assignments for them. He's moving them to where they need to be, geographically, but more often spiritually. He's giving them skills and ideas to take care of His planet, the people He created (all of them!), and His church.
• God is sending people to spread His message: the news of His love - in words and in actions, in every place and every time, to give people the simple and empowering knowledge that they are loved by the infinite Creator of the universe: and the not-so-simple details of how God has worked that love out over the last 6,000 years of recorded history.

God is at work, everywhere, all the time. Because of His mercy and grace, He sometimes allows us to make decisions or "do our own thing" - and then He's there to clean up the mess when we botch it. The devil is at work, trying to bring spiritual and physical harm to people - but God is there, and for each wound that the devil inflicts, He brings forth a new bit of grace which more than counterbalances the damage: God brings good out of evil, a truly miraculous pattern. For all the atrocities and miseries which humans inflict on each other, or which the devil inflicts on them, God is bringing forth more than enough mercy to keep the world moving on the path toward reconciliation.

Yes, God is very busy, and very active. Look to see what He's doing. He's doing something good!