I

How much knowledge do you have of God’s sovereignty?

What insights have you gained into human fate?

Can one achieve everything one desires in life and in the way one wished?

How many things have happened that you never anticipated?

How many things come as pleasant surprises?

How many things do people

still wait on in the expectation that they will bear fruit—

unconsciously awaiting the right moment, awaiting the will of Heaven?

How many things make people feel helpless and thwarted?

Everyone is full of hopes about their fate,

anticipating that everything in their life will go as they wish,

that they will not want for food or clothing,

that their fortunes will rise spectacularly.

Nobody wants a life that is poor and downtrodden,

full of hardships and beset by calamities.

But people cannot foresee or control these things,

people cannot foresee or control these things.

II

Although people live within creation

and derive enjoyment from the many ways

in which the world satisfies their material needs,

and though they see this material world constantly advancing,

yet what their hearts and their spirits feel and experience

has nothing to do with material things,

and nothing material is a substitute for it.

It is a recognition deep in one’s heart.

This recognition lies in one’s understanding of,

and one’s perception of, human life and human fate.

And it often leads one to the apprehension

that an unseen Sovereign is arranging all things,

orchestrating everything for man.

In the midst of all this,

one cannot but accept fate’s arrangements and orchestrations;

one cannot but accept the path ahead that the Creator has laid out,

accept the Creator’s sovereignty over one’s fate,

accept the Creator’s sovereignty over one’s fate.

from The Word, Vol. 2. On Knowing God. God Himself, the Unique III