My grandpa O’Dell, my mother’s dad, had strong opinions, and one of them was this: he did not like President Harry Truman. Not one bit. Grandpa thought Truman cussed too much, talked too plain, and lacked the polish a president ought to have. If you brought up Truman at the dinner table, Grandpa probably shook his head and said something about “standards slipping.”

And yet — here’s the twist — every one of Grandpa’s grandchildren may have Harry Truman to thank for our very existence. My dad and six of his brothers made it home safely from World War II because of the decisions made by President Truman.

History is full of these ironies. We form our judgments based on personality, tone, or style, while God is quietly weaving a story much bigger than our preferences. Truman made decisions that shaped the world my grandparents lived in, the world my parents inherited, and the world that eventually produced me. Grandpa didn’t care for the man, but he and I both were greatly blessed from that moment in history.

We size people up by personality, how they talk, how they look …while God is doing something much bigger than anything we can see.

God does not limit Himself to the people we approve of. He doesn’t wait for perfect vessels. He doesn’t check with us on who qualifies. He uses farmers and kings, prophets and prostitutes, polished leaders and rough-edged ones. He uses the unexpected, the unlikely—and sometimes the ones that get on our nerves. (And yes, President Trump gets on my nerves.)

But God is writing His story, not ours.

And if that’s true—and it is—then we ought to hold our opinions with a little more humility. We ought to pay more attention to what God is doing than to whether we like the instrument He’s using.

My grandpa never changed his mind about Truman.

But I do wonder what he’d say if he could see the full impact of it now—how God used a man he didn’t like to help preserve the world that preserved his own family.

That’s a truth worth holding onto:

“For My thoughts are not your thoughts,
Nor are your ways My ways,” says the Lord.
“For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
So are My ways higher than your ways,
And My thoughts than your thoughts.

Isaiah 55:8-9

As founding Pastor of The Bridge Community Church and Executive Director of Mo Hodge Ministries, Mo resources Pastors and Leaders in the area of leadership development. He enables Pastors and leaders in the following areas: Developing Teams, Church Growth, Church Planting, Discipleship Multiplication, Nonprofit Organizational Management, Multi-site Church Development, Public Speaking, Capital Campaigns, and Sr. Pastor Succession. … Mo and his wife, Nancy, live in Anderson, IN with their children and grandchildren. Though retired, Mo is still active in ministry, preaching, teaching, and planting new churches wherever the Lord leads. You can follow him on LinkedIn or through his Newsletter.

Photograph by Mo Hodge