Look Up: Trusting God with What Comes Next

Recently, I spent a week at Run Home Camp, a week-long overnight baseball camp for boys ages nine to twelve who have experienced relational trauma.

I knew that going in.

I knew these boys had lived through things children shouldn’t have to live through. I knew there would be hard stories behind the faces I met. I knew the week might be emotionally heavy.

But knowing that from a distance and spending a week with them were two very different things. As my friend Katie put it, “it was a mission trip on steroids.”

There was so much beauty at camp. There was baseball, obviously. There was laughter and ketchup-covered faces and silliness. There were boys running around being loud and competitive and ridiculous in the way nine-to-twelve-year-old boys are supposed to be. I got to watch them play. I got to build relationships with them. I got to see personalities emerge and walls come down.

For five days, they got to be boys.

But woven into all of that joy were reminders of what some of them had already carried.

 Sometimes it came through pieces of their stories. Other times, no one had to explain anything. You could see evidence of it in behavior, reactions, fears, or the way a child responded to something that should have been ordinary. There were moments when it felt like we were fighting a war against things that had happened long before any of us arrived at camp.

Then the week ended.

Everyone packed up. We hugged. We cried. We signed t-shirts and baseballs. We said goodbye. The boys went home, and eventually I did too.

Camp ended, but the weight of it didn’t.

I came home to my normal life, except my mind kept wandering back to theirs.

Where are they right now?

Are they safe?

Who is encouraging them today?

Who is reminding them that they’re loved?

What happens when life gets hard again?

What happens to these boys when they’re thirteen? Sixteen? Twenty-five?

The questions are endless because the possibilities are endless…and I have absolutely no control over any of them.

That has probably been the hardest part.

For five days, they were right in front of me. If something seemed wrong, I could pay attention. If one of them needed extra encouragement, I could be his cheerleader. I could sit beside him, laugh with him, pray for him, listen to him, and remind him that he mattered. There were other adults around who cared about them, too. I could see that they were being fed. I knew where they were sleeping. I knew people were watching out for them.

Then suddenly, I didn’t know any of those things anymore.

I walked away from that field carrying sadness, anger, fear, helplessness, and a desperate desire to protect them from everything that could ever hurt them again.

Which, of course…I can’t do.

There are things we desperately want to control precisely because we desperately care.

I think sometimes we associate control with selfishness. We picture the person who needs everything done their way, micromanages everyone around them, or can’t tolerate a change of plans. (Obviously not me. I’m just aggressively helpful.)

But control can disguise itself as compassion, too. It can grow out of love and fear and the knowledge that someone you care about has already suffered enough.

If I could control the rest of these boys’ stories, I would be tempted to do it.

I would make sure they were safe. I would surround them with patient teachers, trustworthy mentors, good friends, and adults who refused to give up on them. I would protect them from abuse, rejection, and abandonment. I would make sure someone always celebrated their birthdays. I would erase things from their past if I could and block others from ever entering their future.

But caring about someone doesn’t give me control over their story.

I hate that.

And that has forced me to wrestle (again) with something Christians say all the time:

God is in control.

I believe that. Completely.

I also think we can say it far too quickly.

There are moments when “God is in control” is comforting. Plans change. A door closes. We don’t know what decision to make next.

Then there are times when you’ve looked suffering in the face.

And your well-meaning, loving Christian friend says, “Remember, God is in control!”

Suddenly the phrase feels heavier. And honestly, a tiny bit (maybe a lotta bit) annoying.

Because if God is in control, what do I do with the things He allows?

What do I do with children who are hurt by adults who were supposed to love and protect them? What do I do with injustice that seems to go unanswered? How do I trust a future to God when He already allowed a painful past?

Those questions brought me to Esther.

When Mordecai learns that Haman has persuaded King Xerxes to issue a decree calling for the destruction of the Jewish people, Scripture doesn’t describe a calm man reminding everyone that God is sovereign.

When Mordecai learned of all that had been done, he tore his clothes, put on sackcloth and ashes, and went out into the city, wailing loudly and bitterly.

Esther 4:1

He grieves. Loudly.

There’s no attempt to make the situation sound better than it is. Mordecai doesn’t pretend faith makes him unaffected by suffering. And Scripture doesn’t condemn him for it.

I needed that reminder. Because some things should break our hearts.

My belief in God’s sovereignty doesn’t require me to become emotionally detached from suffering. It doesn’t make evil less evil or injustice less infuriating. It doesn’t require me to look at what innocent children have endured and immediately wrap it in a coffee-mug theological statement so I can feel better about it. And if I feel like it does, I have seriously misunderstood His Word.

There are things I heard at camp that make me angry. There are things I learned that broke my heart.

I hope they always do.

But Mordecai knew his grief eventually had to lead somewhere.

It led to Esther.

Most of us know the famous words he sends her:

“And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?”

Esther 4:14

We love that verse. It looks great on a Bible study notebook.

But the actual situation is terrifying.

Esther’s people are going to be killed, and—as the queen—she’s in a unique position to do something about it. Approaching the king without being summoned could cost her life. Remaining silent could cost the lives of countless others.

Esther is given something to do.

She’s never given everything to do.

She can’t control Haman. She can’t control the king. She can’t single-handedly control the future of the Jewish people.

What she can do is be faithful with the influence God has given her.

That distinction has been working on me since camp ended.

I couldn’t rewrite what had already happened to these boys or guarantee what would happen when they left. But for those five days, I could listen. I could cheer them on. I could laugh with them. I could help create a place where they felt safe. I could tell them how special they are. I could pray. I could be present. I could show them that they were worth showing up for.

That was mine to do.

The rest wasn’t.

Faithfulness and control aren’t the same thing, although I confuse them more than I’d like to admit.

Control demands an outcome. Faithfulness asks, “What has God actually placed in my hands?”

At some point, faithfulness reaches the edge of our authority. I think I reached that edge on the last day of camp.

I could hug each boy goodbye. I could tell them I was glad I met them. I could pray for them after they left. I couldn’t follow them home.

And to be honest, I hate the vulnerability of that. I want God’s sovereignty to mean nothing bad will ever happen to any of them again. I want to pray for their protection and receive some kind of divine guarantee that every adult from now on will be trustworthy, every home will be safe, and every wound will heal.

God doesn’t give me that guarantee.

Daniel 6 doesn’t give us that version of faith either.

Daniel was faithful and still ended up in the lions’ den. (*Insert a well-meaning, slightly naïve Christian friend yelling, “Remember, God’s in control!”*)

He’s in the den. The stone is placed over the entrance. From the outside, it could look like evil has won.

Yet at no point in the story has God surrendered His authority.

I know how Daniel 6 ends. I know God sends an angel and shuts the mouths of the lions. I know Daniel is lifted out of the den alive. There was a whole VeggieTales episode about it.

But Daniel didn’t.

I know how Esther ends.

But Esther didn’t.

And I don’t get to flip ahead in the lives of the boys I met and make sure everything turns out okay.

That’s where trusting God becomes much harder than simply repeating that He’s in control. I have to trust His authority without knowing what He will allow. I have to believe He is good without requiring Him to give me the ending first.

People can do evil things. Systems can fail. Adults can hurt children. Injustice can go unanswered far longer than it should. None of that becomes less horrifying because God is sovereign.

But none of it becomes sovereign either.

Evil is real—it just doesn’t get the throne.

There’s a strange detail in the book of Esther that I’ve always loved: God’s name never appears in it.

For a story all about the deliverance of God’s people, that feels almost impossible. Yet when you read Esther from beginning to end, His providence is everywhere.

Esther becomes queen. Mordecai uncovers a plot against the king, and his faithfulness is recorded. Later, at exactly the right moment, the king can’t sleep and asks for the chronicles of his reign to be read (because apparently ancient Persian kings also needed bedtime stories when insomnia hit). The servants happen to read about Mordecai. The king realizes he was never honored. Haman happens to arrive. One event leads to another until the plan intended to destroy God’s people begins collapsing in on itself.

If you froze the story at any one point, God’s activity might have been difficult to see.

That matters to me because right now, I’m looking at one frozen point.

I don’t know who God might place in these boys’ lives next. Maybe there will be a coach who sees something in one of them and refuses to give up on him. Maybe a teacher will notice one of them isn’t “just a bad kid.” Maybe something one of us said at camp will come back to him years from now.

I don’t know. And that’s exactly the problem.

I want to.

I want to stand far enough above their stories that I can see how every piece fits together and where God is working. Instead, I’m standing inside one tiny part of a story that is still being lived out.

Which makes me think of Isaiah.

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne; and the train of His robe filled the temple.

Isaiah 6:1

Something had changed on earth. A king was gone. A reign had ended. A source of stability had died. Whatever uncertainty came with that moment was real.

Then Isaiah is given a glimpse of heaven.

There’s still a King.

There’s still a throne.

And Someone is sitting on it.

Centuries later, John sees the same thing:

At once I was in the Spirit, and there before me was a throne in heaven with someone sitting on it.

Revelation 4:2

The Bible keeps pulling our eyes upward.

Not because what happens down here doesn’t matter. It matters immensely.

There’s war. Corruption. Abuse. Broken families. Sickness. Loss. People make terrible decisions that affect others for years. There are circumstances we can’t change and people we desperately wish we could rescue.

But a world filled with brokenness isn’t the same thing as a world outside the authority of God.

The circumstances on earth change—the throne doesn’t.

I think that’s what I’m slowly learning to do with the burden I brought home from camp.

I don’t need to stop caring in order to trust God. I don’t need to shrug my shoulders at suffering and say, “Well, God is in control!”

Esther cared enough to act where she had influence.

We should, too. We speak. We protect. We advocate. We show up. When someone is being harmed and we have the ability to help, God’s sovereignty doesn’t absolve us of responsibility.

But human responsibility has limits.

Mine does, too.

Eventually, there are places I can’t go and problems I can’t fix.

Then I can pray.

I know that can sound like the consolation prize of Christianity. We say, “All we can do is pray,” as though prayer is what remains when every useful option has been exhausted.

But prayer isn’t doing nothing—it’s admitting Who actually holds the authority I wish I had.

When I pray for these boys now, I’m bringing them before the God who doesn’t need a camp schedule to know where they are. He didn’t lose access to them because they went home. He doesn’t need me to provide an update.

I can ask Him to protect them, surround them with good people, heal what’s been hurt, intervene in situations I know nothing about, and make Himself known to them.

But then I have to do something that’s much harder for me than praying the words.

I have to release my claim to the outcome.

Because there’s a difference between compassion and trying to become someone’s savior.

I can love someone fiercely and still be unable to rescue them from everything. That limitation doesn’t mean I’ve failed—it means I’m human.

We were never meant to carry the weight of sovereignty. No wonder it crushes us when we try.

That’s what I brought home from camp without realizing it. I brought home their stories. Their faces. The inside jokes. The things that made me laugh and the things that made me angry. The things I wish I could change.

But I also brought home a responsibility God never actually gave me:

The responsibility for what comes next.

That belongs to Him.

I wish I could tell you that understanding this has made the heaviness disappear.

It hasn’t.

I still think about the boys. I still wonder where they are and what they’re doing. I still pray for them. There are things I heard that still make me angry and things I saw that still break my heart. I still don’t know what happens next.

And I think I’m finally beginning to accept that I don’t have.

I had five days to love the boys God placed in front of me. I hope I did that well. I hope they left knowing there were adults who were genuinely happy to see them walk onto that field every morning. I hope they remember being cheered for, laughed with, listened to, and loved.

I can keep caring. And I can remain willing to act whenever God places something in front of me to do.

But I don’t need to know the next chapter in order to know God will be in it.

There’s a lot I don’t know.

But what’s out of my control has never been out of His.

So when the questions start piling up again, when my mind wanders toward the what-ifs and how-comes, I want to remember where Scripture keeps directing my eyes.

Up.

There’s a throne in heaven.

And it has never once been empty.

Father God, thank You for being trustworthy with what I can’t control. Teach me to be faithful with what You place in front of me and humble enough to release what belongs in Your hands. Jesus, I pray especially for the boys from Run Home Camp. Protect them, surround them with people who will love them well, heal what has been hurt, remind them that they are deeply loved by You, and go with them into every place we can’t. Thank You for every volunteer who showed up to love these boys. Strengthen them as they carry their own memories, and remind them that every act of kindness, patience, encouragement, and love mattered. Help us care deeply without trying to carry what only You can hold. We trust these boys, their stories, and whatever comes next to You. Amen.