God’s Restorative Love
“However, the Lord your God would not listen to Balaam but turned the curse into a blessing for you, because the Lord your God loves you.”
Deuteronomy 23:5
In times of crisis, I have often heard, “Well, God must have had a reason,” but I do not believe this to be true, and this verse suggests this too. Our sinful actions, generational mistakes and just the corruption in the world mean that our world is broken and painful, but God? God is always looking to restore and revive even the darkest of places.
Balaam was instructed by Balak, the king of Moab, to curse the Israelites as they journeyed through his land, but Balaam found that each time he opened his mouth, he was unable to do so, and blessings poured out instead.
Despite the anger of the Ammonites and the Moabites, and their desire to curse the people journeying through their land at all costs, God broke in and made a way where it looked like there was none to be found.
This is a theme time and time again in Scripture: God’s ability to take our mistakes, our indiscretions and our less than ideal decisions and still use them to bring about blessings on others and us. While we are never spared the consequences of our decisions, nothing is irredeemable for Him.
Similarly, when we find ourselves in situations of unspeakable grief and tragedy, God did not have a plan to put us in dark, lonely and cruel places. Yet, He is able to bring beauty from it, over time, in beautiful ways.
