Things Just Happen Along the Way

Life is not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be lived.

~Charlotte Joko Beck

Things Just Happen

Along the Way

“Everything happens for a reason.”

Sorry, I don’t buy that. But I think I understand why we say it and why we want it to be true: because the alternative is even more scary—that sometimes things just happen, and there’s no reason for it.

Christians and non-Christians alike buy into this cultural folk theology. I have been at the scene of a tragic, or unexpected death, being with the family as they are in shock and grieving, and it makes no difference whether they are religious, whether they are “spiritual” or not—they say the same thing to each other for comfort: Everything happens for a reason.

I find it interesting that the concept is comforting, even though we never know the reason. God is under no more compulsion to explain Himself to us than He was to Job. So, knowing that there is a reason, but never knowing the reason…is comforting?

Apparently it brings back a sense of order into the midst of chaos, shock, trauma. Those are the times when everything feels out of order, times when one’s world is collapsing in on itself. We don’t have a clue what the reason is, but we are sure that there must be one. Otherwise the world—my world!—is truly out of control, if things like this can “just happen.”

I’ve heard families guess at the reasons.

“It was just their time.” Again, order. Their appointed, scheduled time had come. “When it’s your time, it’s your time, and there’s nothing you can do about it.” The authority and the structure of order. The one that really bothers me, however, is: “I guess God needed him in heaven more than we needed him here.” For what, for cryin’ out loud?! Heaven is heaven—it is paradise, and there is no evil there. God is in full reign there. What on earth would God need that person for in Heaven? God needs help running the place, and this was just the guy?

I think meaning comes into play more than anything. A reason gives meaning, and if we are going to suffer great loss, such shock and trauma, there damn well better be meaning behind it! It better stand for something. It better have a purpose other than making me miserable. Even if it is a reason I will never know in this life, the fact that there is a reason means there is meaning in what I am going through. I think that it why we choose to believe that everything happens for a reason. Reason assures us that there is meaning—even if we never know the meaning, either.

“I know there must be a reason. If I just knew what it was I could accept it.”  I’m not sure that is an answer, either. We humans seem to have a talent for arguing with God for our own wants. I think that if God did tell us the reason, we’d likely not accept it. Or, since God’s ways are so far beyond our ways, if God did explain it to us, it would be so far above our heads that we would not have a clue what in the world He is talking about. It would give no comfort whatsoever. “What does that mean?” I haven’t a clue. It is beyond me.

We live in a Fallen World where some things tragically just happen. That is part of the falleness of this world. Part of the tragedy of the fallen state—some things just happen. Tornadoes are not guided, they just touch down and wreck havoc. Illness and disease is a part of living in a Fallen World. So are accidents, and what do we say about accidents? They just happen, right? But I do have to admit, sometimes it does seem as though things are purposely piling up on me. I talked with a woman who, having just won her third bout with cancer, is now probably going to have a leg amputated. She wondered what it was she had done that was so bad that God was punishing her. When I told her that I didn’t thing that God was punishing her, but that we live in a Fallen World where this happens, she pursed her lips and gave me a very disagreeing stare. Is it possible that even believing in a reason like being punished by God is more preferable than “just happens?”

Don’t get me wrong—I’m not saying that nothing happens for a reason. I’m not saying that God does not at times allow things for His own reasons, or that God does not sometimes cause things. I believe in those, too. I’ve read too much of it in the Bible not to believe it. But I also believe that we live in a Universe that contains uncertainty, unpredictability, and chaos. I think some things—not all things—but some things just happen.

When things just happen for no reason, I think the meaning is found in what God does with it in our lives. I talked about this last time. It the process of God’s healing of our heart and emotions that gives meaning to what otherwise would be meaningless. This is why, every time I’m around the bed of a deceased patient, gathered with the family, and I pray the prayer of committal, I always pray for God to be very close to the family; for the family to cling to one another, and to cling to God. For it is God’s process work of healing that brings meaning.  

                Leviticus 14 tells us that if a house has mold in it, the owners of the house must clean the house thoroughly, and then send for—of all things—the priest. The priest? Why would one send for the priest? Because it is only the priest that could declare the house as being “clean.” The point is this: no matter now “holy,” righteous, moral, upright or religious a family is, even their house gets mold and becomes “religiously unclean.” Why? Because even the holiest of persons experience the “fallout” of living in a Fallen World.

                Disease. Accidents. Heart attacks. Fires. Tornadoes. Floods. These things can and often do just happen, and they are part of the fallout of living in a Fallen World. Recently I was with a family who’s loved one suddenly coded and died. It took them ninety minutes to make it to the hospital from the small town they lived in. I heard the doctor tell the family that she had no idea why it happened. The patient’s heart surgery had gone textbook perfect, all of the tests and scans showed that his heart was working beautifully, that there was no reason to expect anything but a complete and total recovery. “Sometimes these things just happen,” she told them, “and there’s no apparent reason for it. I’m sorry.” I talked with the wife afterwards. She was in her 80’s, and had been one of the Lord’s servants since her teenage years. So had her husband. “My husband woke up in heaven this morning,” she told me with a smile and tears in her eyes, “and I don’t think he cares at all what the reason was. I’m going to miss him terribly, but I know the Lord is in here,” she pointed to her heart. “and He will help me through this.”

                We’ve all heard of black holes, the great, destructive vacuum cleaners of space. When a black hole appears, it sucks in anything and everything that gets caught in its gravitational pull, and rips it apart to the molecular level. That, my friends, is destruction. What we don’t hear about are the white holes at the other end. This is the exhaust vent of these monstrous vacuum cleaners. Whatever is sucked in by at the end of the black hole, its energy is then spewed out of the other end—the white hole—and that energy is reclaimed and processed back into the life of the Universe. Nothing is wasted, since everything in the Universe is basically made up of energy. Even the table that this laptop is sitting on is really vibrating, living energy, even though it seems dead and inert.

                I think that even that which “just happens,” that which had no meaning, is still made up of energy, and that energy has an effect on us. It can pull us in and destroy us emotionally and spiritually, like a black hole, and we can choose to never get over the tragedy, the loss. I heard of a woman who lived through the Holocaust, and never recovered from it, no matter how much her daughter told her that she needed to. She took the chaos, the negative energy, and absorbed it, and it destroyed her spirit little by little. She carried it in her heart and soul and let it destroy her.

                God “brings us through to the other side” of tragedy, of meaningless suffering, of that which tears our worlds and hearts apart. The presence of God Himself IS meaning. God makes all things new. He takes the destructive energy of that which is happens to us, and through His Holy Spirit, transforms it. Darkness. Death. Destruction. Chaos. That energy is transformed by His Presence in us, and He gives meaning through the transformative process of healing and renewal.

                Renewal. A powerful word. But He’s a powerful God.

                About two decades ago, one of my seminary professors said something that has always stayed with me…

Nothing can separate us from the love of God.

Not even meaningless suffering.

Your Fellow Traveler,

~Steve

**Note: I’m leaving on vacation Thursday, and will be gone through the first week of July. I’m going to Indiana to see our daughter, who is expecting our first grandchild. On July 2^nd, my wife’s birthday, we will find out the gender. And I will be performing the wedding of my daughter’s best childhood friend. It’s going to be a great time. So I won’t be posting again around July 12^th.

                As of today, this blog has had 1,355 page views. Wow. Apparently I don’t know who a lot of you readers are. But thanks for reading! I greatly appreciate it.

~Steve

Order from Chaos--A Cycle of Life

Life is not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be lived.

~Charlotte Joko Beck

Order from Chaos

A Cycle of Life

When God began to create heaven and earth—the earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep, and a wind from God sweeping over the water—God said, “Let there be light…  Genesis 1:1-3a, The Jewish Study Bible

I don’t think we really read what Genesis 1:1 says—and doesn’t say. It does not say that in the beginning of earth’s creation there was nothing, and God created the world out of nothing. It does not say that. Now, simply pointing that out makes my Christian friends turn red with anger and start blowing out veins in their foreheads, and they accuse me of denying the power of God the Creator. I am saying nothing of the sort. I’m simply pointing out that Genesis 1:1 does NOT say that there was nothing. To quote from the commentary in The Jewish Study Bible,

To the modern reader, the opposite of created order is ‘nothing,’ that is, a vacuum.

To the ancients, the opposite of the created order was something much worse than

‘nothing.’ It was an active, malevolent force we can best term ‘chaos.’ In this verse,

chaos is envisioned as a dark, undifferentiated mass of water.

In Genesis 1:1 there was not “nothing,” there was preexistent matter, and it was in chaos. Now, notice the phrase that the commentator used in The Jewish Study Bible: “created order.” From chaos God began the process of creating order, and thus He brought this planet into its present being.

Order from chaos. Powerful words for the mystery that is one’s life. But it is what God does, and it is a powerful, wonderful thing. He brought order and harmony to this planet—He created light, dry land, “time” (day and night, regular seasons), plants, animals, and finally, Humanity.

Who then brought chaos back into the order. One of my instructors once said that when Humanity fell, Creation fell with us. No one knows this better than someone who lives in tornado country. Uncertainty and unpredictability can often result in chaos.

Chaos and its uncertainty and unpredictability are parts of the order that is this world and the Universe. Some of you know how fond I am of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. Simply stated, there are things that happen in this created, orderly Universe that are chaotic, unpredictable, and therefore uncertain. They cannot be predicted. Now, these things do not change the predetermined course of the Universe, but it does add uncertainty and unpredictability to the Universe, and with that danger and the possibility of chaos.

Just recently we had the largest, most massive tornado ever recorded—a monstrous behemoth of destructive chaos. One of the weathermen told everyone in the El Reno and Mustang area to head south, because the tornado was moving northeast. People got in their cars and headed south. To the shock of the meteorologists, so did the tornado! The thing stopped on a dime and headed south. Totally unpredicted, making the course of the tornado uncertain.  The meteorologists were astonished. (Above is a picture of that tornado).

As it is with nature, so it is with human life. Or is it the other way around, since Creation fell with us?—as it is with human life, so it is with nature? Life is full of uncertainty and unpredictability. At times life falls into chaos, and nothing fells worse than chaos.

Every Friday night I do a 12 hour shift at a large metropolitan hospital, usually in the state’s only level one trauma center. I see lives that have plunged into chaos, their world spinning uncontrollably, like being caught in a tornado. The parents who’s “high school star” son shot himself in the mouth. They told the doctor they had no warning signs whatsoever—this was totally unpredictable. The man fighting for his life from what turned out to be a fatal gunshot wound, all because he was standing in the wrong place at the wrong time between two rival gangs as he was going out to his car in the parking lot. The young teenage girl who was told that her teenage brother died in the accident—the accident in which she was the driver. Her scream still haunts me.

Chaos. Lives, solar systems, galaxies spinning out of control in a Universe that is falling apart. That’s how it seems. That’s how it feels when our world is out of control, falling apart.

A co-worker recently told me that her husband was called into the office, was thanked for 12 years of excellent work for the company, but that his position is being eliminated--immediately. As of that moment he had no job. There was no warning whatsoever. The room began to spin.

I have heard Christians in my tradition say that God is the God of order, and Satan is the author of chaos. Chaos needs to be simply rebuked in the name of Jesus. It needs to be rejected. Cast away. I told a family that the beloved member was not going to survive his fatal wound. For the daughter and parents, their worlds collapsed in on itself. The grandfather gathered the large family around for prayer and said, “Lord, we do NOT accept this. We rebuke the enemy!” The family member died.  

The God I read about in the Bible is the God who uses chaos at times, makes it His tool to bring about His purpose. He brought order from chaos in Genesis one. In the Old Testament He brought the armies of other nations to Israel to punish His people for their obstinate rebellion. He brought the Babylonians and allowed them to do the unthinkable—the very thing the Jews believed God would never, ever allow, no matter how rebellious they were: destroy the Temple in Jerusalem. But He did. Israel was in chaos, it’s brightest and best hauled away to Babylon for 70 years. And then God used another army, the Assyrian army, to deliver His people from Babylon, brought them home to rebuild the Temple. New order from chaos.

Jesus predicted chaos in Matthew 24: the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple once again, in 70 A.D. And like a true prophet of God, Jesus predicts it in “End of the World” language, because it was the end of the world—their world. But from the chaos came a new order.

This is how God works in lives. From death comes resurrection. From chaos comes order. New order.

I don’t think God always brings the chaos upon us. I think more times than not the chaos hits us just from the fact that we live in a Fallen World. It comes from a driver that runs the red light, from the diagnosis of terminal cancer, from the tornado that stops on a dime and heads south, from the death of a spouse or child from something that is sheer accident—no one’s fault. But when the chaos hits, we panic. We freak out. We feel like just collapsing on the floor. At least, I do.

But then, if we cling to God, we watch Him bring order from the chaos. Sometimes quickly, sometimes its years later. But He does it.

Order from chaos is a powerful act of God’s grace in our lives. Life from death. New growth from beneath the ashes. Chaos sweeps away the old—and the familiar that we cherish so much and try so desperately to hold on to. The new is so scary—so unpredictable and uncertain.

We like “newness,” change, new order, in small doses. Like one minister in my tradition said at a youth council meeting, “We implement change in the church in small doses so we can control the outcome.”

Well, so much for faith. And so much for leaps of faith.

We like the familiar, and we like change in small doses, so we can have control—control is the opposite of chaos. Chaos is the loss of control. But chaos, uncertainty, unpredictability—those are parts of the mystery that is my life—they are things that help deepen the mystery.

Or, we believe that chaos violates the control of God. If things are in chaos, God is not in control. Remember the story in Mark 4:37-41—Jesus and His disciples are in the boat, and Jesus is down below, sound asleep. A sudden storm arises, and the disciples are scared to death that they are going to drown, and the go below to wake Jesus, crying, “Teacher, do You not care that we are perishing?!” And Jesus is not only perfectly calm, but basically asks why they aren’t calm as well. There was a belief in that day that God is SO in control that He can take a nap—He can go to sleep—and nothing will happen in the Universe that is contrary to His will. Not even during the deadly chaos of a storm at sea.

The existence of chaos in our lives does not mean that God is not in control. Quite the contrary. Genesis 1:1 tells me that God can and often does use anything in our lives, even chaos. Uncertainty and unpredictability.

In the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, those unpredictable and uncertain things that happen in the Universe do not deter the Universe from its predetermined path. In my life, because of God’s grace, chaos, unpredictability, and uncertainty do not deter the course of my life from its predetermined path, because of what God can do with them in my life. What a wonderful mystery!

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present or the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

~Romans 8:38

Your Fellow Traveler Through the Storms,

~Steve

Laugh Hard

I had some eyeglasses. I was walking down the street when suddenly the prescription ran out.

I hate it when my foot falls asleep during the day because that means it's going to be up all night.

Sometimes when I’m in a crowded restaurant I get this overwhelming urge to stand up and yell, “I am not background for your life!”

~Comedian Steven Wright

Frankly, if someone does not have a good sense of humor, I really don’t care to be around them. I love humor, I love to laugh. I love watching comedies, both TV and movies. Having inherited my Dad’s love for the strange and unusual, I especially love off-the-wall, quirky humor—which does not thrill my wife at all. I watched the Ben Stiller movie, Dodge Ball, the other night for what?—the 1oth time?—and still laughed myself silly. “If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball.” How can that not be funny?  I can watch The Big Bang Theory over and over and over. And yes, I’m one of those who thinks that Napoleon Dynamite is sheer comedy genius.

During the growing up, formative years of my life, humor was one of the essential keys to my survival. I don’t mean physical survival, but emotional survival. The odd thing is that the man who made our lives a daily hell also had a great sense of humor, and even though I grew up hating his guts, I can also look back fondly at some uproarious times when we were laughing so hard we were both in tears.

It always made me wonder if Hitler had a sense of humor.

At times the humor was shared with Bud, my stepfather; other times it was at his expense, sort of a humorous revenge. My favorite was when I was 13 years of age. It was summer, and I’d been secretly angry at him for over a month, because on my birthday, he told me that we did not have enough money for a present for me—but we had the money that day to drive to Newport (over 30 miles away) for a case of beer and a bottle of whiskey. My “present” was all the Mountain Dews I could drink there and back. I was seething underneath over this. On the 4^th of July I got my revenge. We were at the Heber Springs Lake, and the place was packed. Bud suggested we have a swimming contest, and he pointed off in the distance to our goal. But after a few strokes, I noticed that Bud had stopped swimming. I looked back and saw him parting the surface of the water with his hands, trying to peer down into the water. I went over to him and asked what he was doing. He made a “shushing” motion, finger to his mouth, and quietly said, “My uppers fell out. I want you to go down and see if you can find them. But be quiet about it.” I went down and immediately found his dentures lying on the bottom. But I thought to myself, This is too good to pass up. False teeth in my hand, I kicked out and swam under water as far as I could. Then I came up out of the water, holding his uppers high above my head and yelled as loudly as I could, “Found your teeth, Dad!” Like I said, the lake was crowded, and everyone around us cracked up laughing. My Mom and my sister were laughing so hard I thought they were going to fall off the picnic table. As for Bud, he was so embarrassed he almost turned purple. I knew I would pay for it. I was grounded for a week. It was worth it.

I could tell you story after story of hilarious times together, times when were egging each other on, and times when he was the butt of my practical jokes. I used to love to hide his pillow in the fridge. But he loved to laugh. Friday nights Mom would be working the 3 to 11 shift at Gray’s Hospital, my sister would be on a date, and Bud and I would sit in front of the TV watching Hogan’s Heroes and F Troop, eating potato chips and French Onion dip, drinking Pepsi’s and laughing. They were our best times together, and frankly, for me it made Bud someone that I could not totally hate, but could actually be fond of at times.

Humor became my shield. Not only was it one of my coping mechanisms, but unfortunately it also became something that I hid behind, well into my adult years. Showing honest emotions was too dangerous in our house, so I hid behind humor. As an adult, rather than saying what I really felt, I would make a joke. Making the other person laugh was my way of holding them off at arm’s length, especially if they were “invading my emotional space.” Needless to say, I had problems with my temper. I would “stuff” my emotions, hiding behind a smile and a witty remark, until the dam would burst, and it would not be pretty.

I’m still learning how to publicly express honest emotions, and it is still hard for me.

Well okay, like everything else, humor can be taken too far, can be used inappropriately. But still, for me, the journey would not be worth the trip if we couldn’t laugh so hard we almost wet ourselves at times. Studies are showing that there is true, healing power in laughter. One time I attended a laughter group. They started the meeting by standing around in a circle and laughing. Yes, it was faked, but they knew that there is healing power in even faked laughter—that’s how powerful it is.

Just recently I “worked a death” (as we call it in the chaplain profession) at a hospital.  The patient was medi-flighted in, rushed to emergency surgery, and died on the table. I was with his shocked, grieving widow and her sisters. Other family began to arrive. Lots of tears, lots of hugging, lots of “I can’t believe it,” and expressions of grief. At one point I was standing outside the consultation room, giving the family some private time, and heard uproarious laughter. I don’t know what it was about, but I knew it was appropriate. Sometimes something is so shocking, so rocks your world, that some humor is absolutely necessary, or you would lose your mind.

Laughter reminds us that not only will life go on, but that it is going on even at that moment.

My favorite times in life are laughing with my wife and daughter. My wife doesn’t laugh easily. I can be cracking up during The Big Bang Theory and she is sitting there with a perfectly straight face, and I wonder what on earth is wrong with her. But when she does laugh, it’s beautiful. It’s musical, and I love it. My daughter laughs as easily as I do, and it’s a wonderful laugh. Her eyes light up.

Personally, I think God has a fantastic since of humor. I mean, have you ever seen an Emu? God must have been cracking up laughing while He was creating that creature. I’ve always pictured Jesus sitting around the campfire with His disciples, all of them laughing so hard they were bent over, holding their stomachs. Honestly, I think at times Jesus was a real hoot to be around.

Okay, let me end this with one of my favorite humorous moments. My mother-in-law was as conservative and straight-laced as they come, and I loved to make her laugh. It gave me such delight. One Thanksgiving, she asked me to lift a completely thawed turkey out of the sink and set in on the kitchen counter. She was standing next to me as I did this, and she asked, “You don’t mind the feel of a thawed turkey, do you?” I smiled and said, “Naw! I used to date a girl that felt like this.” Suddenly, I heard this snorting. I turned, and there was my mother-in-law, on her knees in front of the sink, laughing so hard she was snorting and tears were coming out of her eyes. In all the years I knew Betty, I’d never witnessed her laughing so hard. She could hardly catch her breath. It was so unexpected and so endearing that it had me cracking up with her. It is one of my most cherished moments with my mother-in-law.

The journey of life must be filled with laughter along the way, or it isn’t worth the trip.  

Your Fellow Traveler,

~Steve