Because I Go to the Father

Jesus gave His disciples a reason for peace that they could not yet fully comprehend. "If ye loved me," He said, "ye would rejoice, because I said, I go unto the Father." They had heard Him speak of going away, and it had frightened them. To them, His departure looked like abandonment, but Jesus was asking them to see it differently. His going was not the undoing of His mission.
The cross, the resurrection, the ascension: from the outside, these events appeared as catastrophe followed by confusion. The disciples fled. They hid. They grieved. They could not yet read the events they were living through because they did not have the vantage point from which those events made sense. Jesus, however, had that vantage point. He knew where He was going. He knew what the cross would accomplish. He knew that going to the Father was the completion of the mission the Father had sent Him on, and the opening of a new and better access for every one of His own.
This is the foundation of peace that does not depend on understanding. Paul states it plainly in Romans 8:28, "all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose." Not some things or comfortable things, but all things. The peace this verse offers is not the peace of someone who can see how everything is working out. It is the peace of someone who trusts the One who can see it, even when they cannot.
Jesus walked toward the cross in peace because He knew what the cross was for. You can walk through what you are facing in peace because the same God who authored the resurrection is authoring your story, and nothing in it is outside His purpose.

REFLECT
Is there something in your life right now that looks like a catastrophe but may be part of a larger purpose you cannot yet see?
What would it take for you to trust God's vantage point over your own limited view of your circumstances?

Prayer: Lord, I confess that I cannot always see what You are doing. But You can see it clearly. Teach me the peace of a soul that has stopped demanding to understand and started choosing to trust. Amen.