God works out everything - the big picture, the little details, and everything in between - according to His own good and sovereign purposes (Eph 1.11).
God micromanages our lives. He doesn't just plan out a few big ticket items. Praise the Lord. He knows the smallest sparrow and the grayest hair. And neither falls tot eh ground unless our heavenly Father wills it (Mat 10.29-30).
Every human lamentation and woe must look to the cross. For there we see the problem of evil "answered" - not in some theoretical sense - but by pointing us to an all-powerful god who works all things for good. Shocking as it sounds, the most heinous act of evil and injustice ever perpetrated on the earth - the murder of the Son of God - took place according to God's gracious and predetermined will (Acts 4.27-28).
Our lives unfold, open and close, according to God's providence. As the crafters of the Heidelberg Catechism put it so eloquently back in the sixteenth century, "Providence is the almighty and ever present power of God by which he upholds, as with his hand, heaven and earth and all creatures, and so rules them that leaf and blade, rain and drought, fruitful and lean years, food and drink, health and sickness, prosperity and poverty - all things, in fact, come to us not by chance, but from his fatherly hand (Psa 139.16).
God knows all things and sovereignly superintends all things. God's will of decree is absolute. It is from before the creation of the world. It is the ultimate determination over all things, and it cannot be overturned (Isa 46.9-10).
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