“The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief corner stone. This is the Lord’s doing; it is marvelous in our eyes.” (Psalm 118:22-23).

Isn’t this just like the Lord, who takes what is forsaken and does a wonderful thing with it?  For not many of us were “wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble; but God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God chose the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, and the base things of the world and the despised God chose, the things that are not, so that He may nullify the things that are, so that no man may boast before God” (1 Corinthians 1:26-29).  

Our pastor, Kevin Berry recently told his story, how as a young man he was weak and subject to seizures.  He wondered why he was was the way he was, and what would become of his life.  God made him the leader of one of Lansing’s largest churches.

God took me, a manic-depressive suffering from rejection, a twenty-something whose expectation for the future was a mental institution, a man beset with an evil heart, a sexual pervert.  Despite my having consciously rejected Jesus Christ, He did not give up on me, but worked with my denial and wayward thinking.  He brought me to the end of myself and the beginning of Him.  Today I have been with Christ for over 44 years, and have been married to one woman for 47.  I have five children and eleven grandchildren.  I’ve my own business.  What can I say?  “This is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes.”

I think of Len Hill, the leader of New Directions prison ministry.  He more or less took this work from next to nothing to a ministry that serves close to 2,000 persons in about fifty locations every week.  All on a budget of about $80,000!  Whenever I am with Len I ask him how the ministry is going, and he shares things such as these.  And then he always adds, with much gratitude in his heart, “this is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in His sight.” 

This is God, who makes much of little.  Who makes a wilderness into a plush plain.  Who brings forth water from the rock.  Who turns our mourning into dancing.  Who makes the broken person whole.  Who raises the dead, both physically and spiritually.  

God took me, a man who was anti-business and hated to paint, and gave me a painting business.  He took me, anti-marriage, and has given me to be married close to five decades.  

He took my business, with debts over a million dollars and our loans called by the bank, on the brink of bankruptcy, and cleared us of every debt, restored what had been lost, and set us on a course of year-over-year profitability.  

God took Jesus, despised and rejected, a man those at the time considere by men to be smitten by God, made a curse by reason of the cross, and set Him on high above everything else in the universe.  

It is a good thing to be among the lowly; God can work with you.  He gives grace to the humble.  

It is a good thing to be up against the wall, with no where to go; God can work with that.  

It is a good thing to be broken, as then God can fix you.  To be sick, as God can heal you.  To be lonely, as God can set you in a family.  To be poor, so God can make you rich.  To be a sinner and acknowledge that before God, as then He can make you righteous.  There is no need to part the sea if there is no enemy army encroaching upon you.  These are the things God can do that no man can do.  And it is the Lord’s doing, marvelous in our eyes.  

If a person is a believer, he has a story, and every story is along these lines:  “I was blind, but now I see.”  You understand that salvation is of the Lord, it is His business; you are merely the recipient.  What was not now is.  He has made something grand out of your puny little life, and the only way it could have happened is if the Lord did it.  And He did.  And it is a wonderful, marvelous thing.