Marching Bands and Suffering

That’s pretty cool, eh?  But I bet it looked pretty meaningless from the sideline.  Consider this by Randy Alcorn:

Ever been to a football game at half time when the band forms words or pictures in the middle of the field?  They look great from up in the stands.  But what if you’re on the sidelines when the band forms its symbols?  You can’t see them.  What the band’s doing appears pointless, confusing, apparently meaningless.  We see life from the sidelines.  God sees it from above, in the grandstands.  The Bible invites us to trust God that one day, when we can see from Heaven’s perspective, many things will make sense that don’t appear to when we’re on the sidelines.  (Alcorn, The Goodness of God: Assurance of Purpose in the Midst of Suffering , p53)