I could tell right away that something was wrong.

I enjoy animation and I am especially a fan of Claymation. My favorite is the British series, “Wallace and Gromit”. Wallace is an eccentric inventor with an excessive love for cheese and Gromit is his silent, but much more intelligent, side kick and pet dog. One of the first episodes I ever saw involved a master jewel thief, (who happened to be a penguin), depositing Wallace in a pair of remote controlled mechanical pants and using him to carry out his thefts. Thus the name of the episode, The Wrong Trousers.

I recently experienced something a bit similar. We were going up to Saskatoon for a family event and I quickly packed, grabbing a pair of dress slacks from my closet. Everything seemed fine until the morning of the event. I started to get dressed and begin to pull on the pants when I immediately realized things weren’t quite right. The slacks were a couple inches too tight and a good four to six inches too short. They were the wrong trousers.

Fortunately I had another pair. Later we realized that somehow an old pair of my son’s slacks had gotten hung in my closet. He had actually outgrown them a few years before and they somehow disappeared into the back of his wardrobe until they reappeared in a pile of his dirty laundry. When they were clean the pants moved on to hang with the rest of my clothes until I packed them by mistake.

Maybe I didn’t just get the wrong trousers. Maybe I got the wrong body. Maybe when God was forming me in my mother’s womb He grabbed the wrong body off the rack. Maybe the whole thing was a mistake. The appendicitis, the hernia, the detached retina, the cancer. Maybe none of them were meant for me. It was all just some terrible cosmic error.

But God doesn’t make mistakes. He knew me before I was born, before I was even conceived. He knew all the days of my life and His plans for me were, and still are, for good. So why the disease? Why non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma? Was that His plan? How could that be “good”? I have realized that God is all good, all powerful, all sovereign, and all loving. He created us to have relationship with Him and that could only happen if He gave us the gift of free will. That allows us to freely and completely love and worship Him but also to reject Him and His ways.

That’s what happened. Humankind made a choice and moved away from God’s love and grace. The relationship was broken and sin, disease and death came into the world. All of us continue to bear the consequences. We are all going to die. We are all going to face illness and pain. We are all going to sin. None of this is God’s will. He made us for something better, but our choice, our sin, has lead us to where we are.

But it doesn’t end there. The good news is that God has made a way for His relationship with us to be restored, a way for us to be healed, spiritually, emotionally, and physically. It is a gift He offers to us today and for all time. Have you accepted it?

“Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” Revelations 21: 3-4

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” John 3:16-17

This truth can become real for you today. You just need to decide.