"By the Hand of God"

While in Uganda, we met and ministered with a man named Justice. To get right to the point, I'll shorten the story significantly.

Justice is in training to become a Dr. He is employed by the mission and his education is being paid for by an American sponsor so that his services can be directed specifically toward the medical wing of the ministry in Uganda. Because we were a part of 3 1-day HIV/medical clinics during our time there, we got to know Justice fairly well.

In one discussion with Justice, one of our team members asked him, "Justice, how did you get out of the poverty of your village and break that cycle?" Justice took a deep breath, and knowing some of his story from the missionaries, I was expecting him to describe how he came to work with the missionaries as a cook, how he met his wife, how he was inspired by the missionaries to pray about medicine, and on and on as any American Christian would do to answer that question.

O was to be left hanging in that expectation. Justice exhaled and said with profound humility, "it was by the hand of God." And he was done. He didn't say anything else. No elaboration. No explanation. No story. No background. That was it.

Now if your experiences in life are anything like mine, you have had some Christian somewhere give you an answer somewhat like that with supercilious pronouncements of faith. To which I always respond with an internal rolling of my eyes. (I do this on the inside so that no one will see how spiritually immature I am.) I do this because I know that this person has just decided to brag about their spirituality to cover up their pride in the physical accomplishment they are describing.

With Justice there was none of that. It was obvious to all of us in the conversation that he genuinely had no other explanation of the events that had led him to the situation he was in than that it had to be the hand of God.

Well, if I can be so humble as to remove my own pride in earthly accomplishment, I might actually see the hand of God more. And if I see the hand of God more, I might actually be humble enough to actually give God that kind of credit without either using the word supercilious or by being supercilious.

By the hand of God!

sup-er-cil-i-ous
–adjective
haughtily disdainful, as a person or a facial expression.