part of something BIGGER ephesians 3

I was thinking this morning about how I respond when things don't go as I wanted. I tried to do good and yet it was thrown back at me. You gave yourself for someone, and yet it wasn't good enough, your kindness was rejected. We give ourselves for the best of reasons and yet at times bad comes from it. Where is God? Right there. What is He doing? Hmmmm.
The old, and not so satisfying, saying goes something like, "God works in mysterious ways." Its not so much a mystery to be solved as a mystery to wait and see, like a street artist whose initial splashes of paint look like chaos, but in the end, when what we thought was the central part of the image is covered over and something else, much grander, like Christ Himself, is seen instead.
Paul is in prison, his friends feel badly for it, but he wants them to know it is not by chance, but fro God, who is working His plan. And that pan is much more than just leading events on the world stage to His intended end, it is working His intending end in each of us, His children, saints, set apart ones. His greatest, above and beyond power is not just working around us, or even for us, but is working in us, for and to His glory, in the misdt of whatever "stuff" is happening.