Day 80

Dot-to-dot worksheets are popular tools for teaching children to connect random dots by sequential numbers or letters. To the delight of any child, connecting every dot according to the instructions reveals a completed picture.

As a Christ-follower, our lives are like a dot-to-dot worksheet. Apart from union with our Creator by faith in Christ, life often appears as a series of incomprehensible dots on a page. Our souls are continually shaped by countless experiences and interactions with others, good and bad. We lack the understanding to interpret the relevance or process the pain of many different life events. As a result, we often suffer from despairing emotions that tempt us to doubt the goodness of God. We are incapable of connecting the apparent randomness of many dots or experiences that God in His foreknowledge has allowed.

Yet as we daily come to Christ and deepen our understanding and faith in God’s sovereignty, goodness and love, we learn that each dot in our lives has been carefully ordered:

“We know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28).

God will reveal His purposes for you as you trust and follow Him with the carefully chosen dots of His design. He simply instructs you, in a broken world, to pay careful attention to His precepts and to order your life by them. Yielded to and guided by the Holy Spirit, His predetermined plans for good will be accomplished. Like the careful strokes of a child’s pencil guided by preset instructions, you too will be fully assured of the God-exalting and soul-satisfying outcome that God is meticulously completing in you. The connected dots of your life will form the image of Christ to the praise and honor of His name.

“And I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue His work until it is finished on the day when Christ returns.”

Philippians 1:6