Incipient Laptop-itis and Calvinism: A Comforting Combination

I am sitting here in the final throes of incipient laptop-itis. The Lord has provided the funds through my work this summer to purchase a new laptop to replace my ailing one. I found a really nice system on eBay (details later) and have my bid in to win it. With 5 minutes to go. With nobody else bidding atm. With me about to fidget to death sitting in front of my brother's desktop, my dead current laptop on the desk. 1 minute 35 seconds to go...

It is at times like these that I am glad to be a Calvinist--it is so comforting. Most people don't understand this--they think that to believe that the Lord knows and controls the future means that they are chained to fate. It's not that way. From our side, we see our free will. From the Lord's, though, outside of time and space, he can see and touch our futures in a way we can only imagine. So it's comforting. He knows and cares whether or not I win the item I want. It's nice to think sometimes in the uncertainty that the choice or outcome we worry about is a known fact in the future--and God knows. It is comforting to have a full view of God's sovereignty in a situation like this--like when you get outbid at 24 seconds to go.

Game over. You didn't win. But the Lord knows, and he may also know if that computer was a lemon, the seller would cheat you, or just that you ought to buy something else. It's far from being restricting--it's freeing to know that the King of all Kings, the Creator of Time and Space, the Owner of the cattle on a thousand hills, has my well-being in mind--I don't have to worry.

In His Service,
John Calvin Young