April 20, 2011
No Rhyme or Reason
We all have friends, acquaintances and family members who do things that seem to defy logic or common sense. Normally we don’t demand an explanation from them, unless of course their action (or lack of) directly impacts our life. More often we determine that what they are doing and how they are handling situations really isn’t any of our business. Isn’t it interesting though, that when it comes to God, we barrage the gates of heaven asking ‘Why?’ Why do good things happen to bad people? Why is the life of a faithful servant cut short? Why do the innocent suffer? I recently read a commentary by Larry Richards, “We do not need to know why He [God] acts as He does; knowing Him is enough.”
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Gail;
-----In the particulars I generally agree with Larry Richards’ statement. In the general, I particularly disagree. I feel a great need to know why God does what He does and an unending curiosity about how He does it. My knowledge of Him must have a discernable connection to the realities I experience, otherwise it seems more theory than knowledge. What God does and why He does it is a part of Him, so to me a knowledge of Him must have at least some inkling about it.
-----But like a cog on a small gear embedded in a Swiss watch, a good thing happening to a bad person or a bad thing happening to a good person systemically meshes with not only the countless number of other things happening around it but also with the innumerable thoughts and feelings of those people it touches to ultimately, in a general way, make some statement by God about the time in which it happened. We won’t know specifically why or how it happened. But by our knowledge of the way the hands sweep the dial, we know specifically that its import involves God setting up evil for a final fall and godliness for its saturating victory.
-----Even within ourselves, regarding the things we do that we know we are not to do and those we don’t do knowing that we should, there is something missing from our specific knowledge of why’s and how’s. Yet we know that God maintains such a caring control about our lives that the tragedies of them, and the most embarrassing failures of ourselves, get used by Him in working His good. We can’t name every cog and gear in the watch or acutely envision their every movement. But we can clearly understand the synchronization of it all and definitely observe the watch’s hands in motion.
-----Therefore, when I do wrong I don’t go off wondering if I am not a child of His. I don’t go searching for the meanest whip with which to flagellate my bare back. When bad things happen to me I don’t question God’s connection with my life. I just know that for some purpose, maybe specifically of my life or of someone’s effected by mine, God has brought that kind of cog around again to mesh with the others. I don’t worry over it, because I know He has many good cogs yet to mesh inside the works. That I am forgiven is the weight taken from me so I can invest my strength in learning and practicing more godliness than I am presently. And when others goof up or are kicked off their stool by a bad situation, I can say even less about the particular why’s and how’s of what God allows. I must say more about the forgiveness and providence He will enmesh in the rest of what is to happen by the time He’s cleaned up this little mess.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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