How can we know what God is doing?  Whether we believe in God or not, we all, at some point in our lives, ask this question.  It's a good question, too.  Finite beings that we are, we all wonder what is going on in realms beyond us.  We all wonder how we can possibly understand what beings much bigger--in every way--than us are doing. 
     Some Jewish leaders in the first century A.D. had this problem, too.  Looking around at the rapidly growing popularity of Christianity and how it seemed to capture way too many, from their standpoint, hearts, they wondered aloud how they could stop it.  How could they suppress this, as they saw it, new heresy?
     As they argued, one of them, Gamaliel by name, made an insightful comment.  "Brothers," he said, "if this movement is not of God, it will die quickly.  We need not worry about it.  If it is of God, however, we will not be able to overthrow it, or else we may find ourselves fighting against God."
     Gamaliel understood the stakes at hand.  Although none of the Jews could have known at that point that Christianity would eventually spread across the entire planet, Gamaliel realized that if it is indeed of God, nothing they would do could possibly stop it.
     So it is with the activity of God.  We don't always know what it is, we don't always know what it means, but we do know this:  when God moves, nothing we do will stop it.
     The challenge of course is that we rarely know what God is doing until after he does it.  In the end, we will know.  For now, however, we live in the surprises of God.  And God's surprises are always good.