Day 1 – Wrongly Grouped?

Bible Reading: Acts 17:22-31

Have you ever cursed your luck for landing in a wrong group?

Maybe a lecturer in school paired students up to work on an assignment together, and then you got paired up with that guy that is totally unserious and would never move a finger to get anything done. Now here you are looking at all the other groups where there is so much exciting collaboration going on and wondering why you are here. 

Or maybe it’s you being on a wrong lane in traffic. Every other lane is moving except yours. Seems some car has broken down somewhere in front of your lane. (Is it just me though, but most times, when you finally get out of a bad lane on traffic and push your way into the moving lane, there’s a way it seems that the lane you left now becomes the fastest lane… )

Does it sometimes seem that way when we think about nations? Does it sometimes feel like a chance joining of several people to live together and share identity without any form of purpose to it?

If you’re Nigerian, you might likely have at some point felt that sense of landing in a wrong group. Or said those words, ‘those of us wey normal for this Nigeria no reach five’.  Maybe you’re not Nigerian though and you feel you got placed in an exciting group. But what is the purpose to it all?

The scripture is clear that nations are a God idea within which He works- from the original split at Babel), where it seems 70 nations were established from the 70 families listed in Genesis 10, to the 193 countries listed as members of the United Nations today. We can either look at each of them as mere circumstantial geographical divisions or look at them through the lens of a God-design.

He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth Acts 17:26 ESV

God made it. Not just that, God purposed it:

He has done this so that every person would long for God, feel their way to him, and find him Acts 17:27 TPT

Nations and all that goes on within the conversations, offer us a great opportunity to seek God. 

We must see the instrumentality of nations in pointing us to God. When we find ourselves in what seems like a wrong group, it gives us the opportunity to seek God to set things right.  When we find ourselves in a thriving group, it must serve for us as a platform to seek God and experience Him.

In other words, by the design of nations, there is God-opportunity. We shouldn’t be people who just view nations from the perspective of problems or or benefits therein.  

We must see nations as a God design.  We must see nations as God purposed. And we must see the instrumentality of nations in pointing us to God

May we thrive in seeking God by the opportunity of nations, and not merely live in the power of limitation.