“In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, in order to fulfill the word of the Lord spoken by Jeremiah, the Lord moved the heart of Cyrus king of Persia to make a proclamation throughout his realm and also to put it in writing:
“This is what Cyrus king of Persia says:
“‘The Lord, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth and he has appointed me to build a temple for him at Jerusalem in Judah”” Ezra 1:1-2
Why did the Lord give Cyrus, a Persian, his kingdoms? Why did He grant him such power, wealth and influence?
As Christians we often look at things like this in a purely cause and effect perspective. We think God gives people things or blesses them because they are good people, because they deserve them. That’s why it throws us into such a tizzy when bad things come the way of good people and good things come the way of bad people (we can discuss the fallacy of the whole good people, bad people concept another time). It doesn’t compute. Our sense of fairness tells us this should not be the case.
God has a plan, and that plan has the good of all His people in mind. But good is no always what we think it should be. We are immature and have limited understanding and often what we think is good (for us or otherwise) is different than what really is good.
God granted Cyrus his kingdom, his power, his wealth as an instrument to accomplish God’s will. He was going to re-establish and redeem Israel. Cyrus and his power, wealth and influence were to be a key factor in doing so. Here, God uses someone who is not a Jew to bless His chosen people the Jews.
Throughout history God has used all manner of people to accomplish His will. Some have been people of faith while others were not.
Part of the reason we struggle reconciling these thoughts is because we misunderstand what blessings are. We look primarily at blessings as things we like. When I was a kid I didn’t like that red medicine mom put on my knee when I tore it up playing football in the yard. But in spite of what I thought about it, it was a good thing.
Secondly, we have a hard time seeing the big picture. There is a big picture in God’s will, not just for humanity overall but for each one of us in particular. Now, there is no way we can know or comprehend God’s compete will for the whole world or even ourselves but there things that we can know. He wants us to be perfect in Him. Regardless of the attainability of that goal in this life He coaxes, encourages, pulls, pushes, and whatever else is necessary to keep us moving toward that mark. To that end He uses whatever He chooses to use to accomplish His will. If it means giving a kingdom and power to someone, that’s what He does.
It is important to distinguish God’s work to accomplish His will versus our idea that He gives good things only to people who deserve them. The ‘good’ that God wants to give is His perfect will for us. We twist ourselves into all manner of shapes and directions when we try to figure out why good things come to bad people and bad things come to good people against the backdrop of our perceived sense of fairness. We are better off putting into practice the admonition “Be still and know that I am God.”