All Things Work Together

All Things Work Together

Fanny Crosby lost her sight at six weeks due to medical negligence. As an adult she was asked if she wished she could see. She replied: 'No. If I could see, I might not have written the hymns I have written.' She had written over 9,000 hymns by the time of her death. Her blindness had shaped her inward attention, her reliance on memory, her particular sensitivity to the devotional life. She did not celebrate the medical error. But she trusted that God had worked through what was meant for harm to produce something she could not have produced otherwise. Romans 8:28 was not theory for her. It was testimony.

Romans 8:28 is one of the most cited and most debated verses in the New Testament. 'All things' — the scope is comprehensive: the good and the painful, the chosen and the unchosen, the obedient decisions and the mistakes. 'Work together' — the Greek sunergeo implies active cooperation, like gears working in concert. 'For good' — not for pleasantness or comfort necessarily, but for the ultimate good as defined by verse 29: being conformed to the image of Christ. The promise is not that all things feel good or even become good in themselves. It is that God actively works through all things toward a specific, loving purpose in the life of those who love Him. This requires trusting the Weaver when you cannot see the pattern.