Our heavenly Father always knows what’s best and knows the best way to bring about what’s best. Even when it seems like he’s completely lost his way, when our lives seem like nothing but chaos, the Lord knows what he’s doing.

The other week I came across one of those sayings that sticks in your mind and makes you think: “An expert hits a target no-one else can hit; a genius hits a target no-one else can see.” It struck me that there is a third level we could add: “the Lord hits a target no-one else can even imagine.”

How often in Scripture and in history does the Lord act in a surprising, unexpected way? His ways are not our ways, and that is not because God is being unpredictable in a random or arbitrary way, but because he is so infinitely greater and wiser than us, so that we simply can’t imagine what is involved in working all things for good. Wisdom means knowing what is best and knowing the best way to bring about what is best. And God does that in everything that he ordains! Just think about that. He doesn’t just do the wisest thing nine times out of ten or ninety-nine times out of a hundred. He always does it every single time.

We have an illustration of this in Exodus 13.18-19, when the Lord brought his people out of Egypt. They come to a crossroads at the border of Egypt and the obvious way to Canaan is north, along the well-travelled Via Maris (the way of the sea). It was the shortest and most direct route. The Israelites would be there in less than two weeks if they had taken this road.

But it must have seemed like God was holding his map upside-down, because instead of telling them to go north he sends them south and east towards the desert. Things will get even stranger at the beginning of chapter 14, when God tells Israel to make a U-turn and go back towards Egypt. It makes no sense at all—it looks like they are hopelessly lost in the desert, going round in circles with no clue where to go!

But of course the Lord knows exactly what he’s doing. The reason for taking the scenic route to Canaan is explained in Ex 13.17—the sea road would lead Israel into a head-on confrontation with the Philistines on the coast.

Isn’t that so touching? The Lord knew Israel was fragile. The people weren’t ready for war just yet. They will face war soon—in about two months’ time against the Amalekites (chapter 17), but they can’t handle it right now. They have just come through a major trauma. Perhaps today many of them would be diagnosed with PTSD. They have lived as oppressed slaves for decades—as long as any of them can remember they have endured the lash of the Egyptian taskmasters. What must it have been like for them to witness the increasingly apocalyptic devastation of the plagues? And now, suddenly, in the course of a single night, they have been set free and had to get up and leave the only home they’ve ever known. They have walked out of Egypt and everyone they pass is involved in burying their firstborn (Num 33.4). They were overjoyed to be free—but freedom can be an unsettling, even frightening, prospect for people used to slavery.

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