At a recent conference I attended a session titled, Budgeting 101,
managing the public checkbook. Among my take-a-ways from the class was the
fact that a department head’s draft budget is often filled with contingencies.
Rather than budgeting for the ordinary, they budget for the unexpected and the
‘what if’ situations. It often follows that at the end of the year they have a
‘use it or lose it’ philosophy. I’m thinking that my prayer life may be filled
with a few contingencies, seldom do I pray just for the ordinary. “Give us today our daily bread.” (Matt
6:11 NIV)
1 comment:
Gail;
-----Contingencies are important. That events will soon happen is itself a fundamental aspect of intelligence and emotion. What kinds of events will most likely happen and how soon are very mechanical products of cause and effect playing upon nature’s randomness, God’s interventions and inspirations, Satan’s demonic influences, and people’s active and reactive choices in moving their situations forward. We all know this, maybe not in defined terms, but at least intuitively. We bring groceries home because the evening meal is a far more likely contingency than the disastrous, afternoon house fire. We rise in the morning and go to work because another month’s life and need for supplies is far more likely than dying within that month. Yet we recognize the remote contingencies through insurance, the remoter through general prayer, and the remotest through simple trust in God and statistical absurdity.
-----Furthermore, the degree to which a person must become involved in contingency is dependant upon the degree to which he is responsible for a situation and the degree of complexity to which he must maintain it and move it forward through a series of godly conclusions. I once was responsible only for myself, a kitty-cat, and a handful of client’s tax situations. Now, with a wife, three daughters, two grandchildren, a kitty-cat, and a couple hundred tax situations, my life is less simple. Hopefully, it’s no less godly. But its contingencies are more significant and varied.
-----The Bible is full of general principles about handling life’s complexities and contingencies. That man must eat by the sweat of his brow is God’s first principle regarding inevitable complexity. That he must love his neighbor adds more. And that no man knows the hour or the day of Christ’s return subjects us to sorting the inevitabilities from contingency’s probabilities, possibilities, and implausibilities for making the situation of our responsibility survivable into as many days as God has planned. Sometimes we wish we could return to the simpler situation for the godliness we felt in it.
-----But we fool ourselves. Godliness is not because of a situation’s simplicity. It is because of the mind’s simple connection of godly principle to the next contingency at hand. It is because of responsibility met by actions of His principles. George Washington’s situations were not simple. His life was very godly. He brought his faith in Christ to the complex contingencies he faced, and many hundreds of millions of people benefited by his applying principled actions. So his godliness was giant in size, thankfully, filling a life which was giant in effect. Godliness is less about how much complexity can be trimmed from your life and more about handling contingencies by His principles. Complexity is merely about life’s size. “His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant; you have been faithful over a little, I will set you over much; enter into the joy of your master.’” (Mat 25:21)
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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