Please understand that I'm not trying to excuse any failure on the part of someone's duty to another. I do not know your B-I-L, nor his pastor, and that is good for the sake of objectivity. But I don't think it's particularly helpful for us to look back on the path of our lives and attempt to identify this or that possible turn in the crossroads of our lives. But one could just as easily look at it in the positive light of God's providential dealings and conclude: "This is how I discovered the vocation to which God has called me! It had many winding paths, and I wasn't always sure where I was going, but God watched over me at every point of my journey. And if I can now be a better help to any fellow pilgrim, in sharing with him the ways of God with me, then I pray God that he will place such a brother in my present path that I might encourage him along the way."

I believe that even the prayers of God's people are woven into the tapestry of God's eternal counsels. And sometimes if we look at God's dealings with us from this side of eternity, we often see only this side of the tapestry, i.e. the side that appears as a jangled mess of fabric. But when we cross the Jordan and behold the other side of the tapestry, we shall behold the beauty of God's providence and marvel at the rhyme and reason of every stitch God has sewn in His providential dealings with us, and give him praise for the way in which He directed us, and confess with Jacob of old, "Surely the LORD [was] in this place, and I did not know it." (Genesis 28:16).

DTK

__________________
Sola Scriptura est norma normans non normata
David T. King, pastor
Christ Presbyterian Church (OPC)
Elkton, Maryland
Augustine (354-430): Therefore what He [i.e., Christ] has deigned to speak to us, we ought to believe that He meant us to understand. But if we do not understand He, being asked, gives understanding, who gave His Word unasked. NPNF1: Vol. VII, Tractates on John, Tractate XXII, §1.