Saturday, November 12, 2011

It won't make sense, but that's God

Finishing my thoughts in Ecclesiastes ..

Solomon writes (in the Good News Bible edition), "I saw all this when I thought about the things that are done in this world, a world where some people have power and others have to suffer under them. Yes, I have seen the wicked buried and in their graves, but on the way back from the cemetery people praise them in the very city where they did their evil. It is useless."

In other words, stuff happens. We live in a world where the 99 percent often are dealt evil by the 1 percent. It just is what it is. Stuff happens. Inequality happens. Bad things happen, even to good people, maybe especially to good people, maybe the bad things happen to especially good people and the bad things are perpetrated by the bad people. Stuff just happens, and it has been happening since, well, before Solomon's time. It just happens and happens and happens, and it seems prayer doesn't stop it from happening no matter how often we pray or how long we pray or even how sincerely we pray. Stuff just happens.

Solomon, supposedly the wisest man to ever walk the planet, spent a great deal of time exploring what it means, what all of this means. He pondered and mused about this entity we call life, about how we're mended and we're torn, about how it's okay to be lonely as long as we're free, about the relationship between God and man.

This is what he discovered after much, uh, soul searching.

"15 So, I'm all for just going ahead and having a good time—the best possible. The only earthly good men and women can look forward to is to eat and drink well and have a good time—compensation for the struggle for survival these few years God gives us on earth. 16-17 When I determined to load up on wisdom and examine everything taking place on earth, I realized that if you keep your eyes open day and night without even blinking, you'll still never figure out the meaning of what God is doing on this earth. Search as hard as you like, you're not going to make sense of it. No matter how smart you are, you won't get to the bottom of it."

Well. That's disappointing at best, maddening at worst. We can ponder it all, load up on wisdom and shine the spotlight on all of it and the best we can come up with is it makes no sense at all.

Frankly, I can't accept that. Sure, stuff happens. But the love of God has to have meaning. Doesn't it? Surely?

Rich Mullins, a singer/songwriter who made a huge difference in my life, was John the Baptist to my, uh, well, to my Jesus I guess. He was the one whose words stung and whose words lifted and whose words made the kind of difference I hope my words do for someone, somewhere. He was a great, great man. Then one Saturday night coming from a gig in somewhere Illinois or somewhere Idaho or somewhere somewhere, he was in an automobile accident and he died.

Great man. Great words. Gone.
Me? I could be gone and it make no difference to anyone who isn't related.

I still don't understand how God thinks that is a good swap. Why not him instead of me? I've asked that question hundreds of times. Makes no sense no matter how I look at it.

Stuff happens, though, and I guess I'll get it one day. Maybe. Or maybe not.

Does my getting it mean that the answer will be easier to get? Maybe. Or maybe not. But what I believe is that God gets to decide those things, not I. What is clear is that our getting it is not the prerequisite for life or for living or even for equality. Get it? God is the keeper of wisdom and he lets it out in minuscule bits and tiny pieces, and that's going to be the way it is for eternity.

Would I do it differently? Youbetcha. But that's just the way it is. Stuff happens. Godly stuff. Does it always make sense? Nope. Seldom does. But that's sort of the way you distinguish Godly stuff from our stuff.  Don't let it give you a migraine, take a bit of a Godly pill and call him in the morning.

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