Nobody Really Has It Together...

Nobody really has it together. There are a lot of us who kind of pretend we have it together. Who have a nice façade of “togetherness” but some where there is a soft spot, a problem or a life difficulty that isn’t really all together.

I have often taught what I call the storm principle. The storm principle states that everyone is in one of three places in their life. They are either in the middle of a storm, just finally coming out of a storm or in that brief calm before the storm. A lot of our storms are not even of our own making, they are the result of other’s actions that impact our life. The storm is always nearby, so if you are in the calm place, enjoy it while you can.

This brings us back to the statement above about nobody really having it together. I guess a truer statement is that at any giving time everything that you have together can fall apart. The law of entropy takes over and things really do tend to move to a state of disorder. I know of not less than three competent, capable and respected professionals that in the past couple of weeks have been told, for no apparent reason, that they were being laid off. These are not the people that that kind of thing happens to. These are the “go to” people who come early, stay late, and go above and beyond. These are the people that their coworkers turn to in times of difficulty and trouble, but decisions above their pay grade were made to eliminate them from their respective organizations. They thought they had it all together and it fell apart. The storm came, seemingly out of the blue, and it hit hard.

Others of us have been asked to endure the storm a little longer, or indefinitely. We discussed opportunities and options that never occurred. Our ability to trust has been diminished and we feel like we are forgotten or at least taken for granted. Our storm is not one of crashing waves and lightening, but one of being stranded in the middle of an endless ocean with no breeze in our sails and no pull upon our lives. It is a storm of deafening calm, of waveless waiting and of mirages on the horizon that turn out to be nothing more than hopeful figments of our imagination. So you sit and pray for a breeze, a direction, a destination.

I used to think I knew people who had it together. Who never faltered, who never doubted or who never struggled. But, eventually, even they had a storm that, at least for awhile, overtook them. They to were caught unaware and unready for the unexpected blow from the storms of life. Nobody really has it all together.

We travelers in the storm, what do we do? How do we continue when the skies are dark and the rain is cold? Today I do not have words of encouragement, I only have words of the one who promised to be a light into a dark world. Today I am looking for the light and hoping that the light I see is not a train at the other end of the tunnel. I remain…

In the Storm,
Marty Cauley

Gracious God who comes to us in the storm, bring light into the darkness and peace into the midst of the storm. In the name of the One who endured a storm beyond compare, Jesus, I pray. Amen

The Problem with Theodicy

There is evil in the world. That much is true. I seriously doubts that anyone with any sense of reality would deny the presence, even the seeming omni-presence of evil in the world. Whether we call it original sin or the condition of the human heart yearning to please self over the common good, evil is present.

I have been struggling, however, with theodicy. Theodicy is the vindication of divine goodness and providence in view of evil in the world. Rather, the idea that eventually, God and good will win despite the incredible cruelty that this world dishes out. This is particularly true in light of the past several days. In the last ten days I have been utterly confused and jaded by the church vocationally, Danelle has failed to have her teaching contract renewed after three years of stellar reviews and evaluations, it seems that evil has won at every turn and today one of the back windows just fell off of the van. Its like its not enough that we have both experienced the equivalent of vocational rejection, we had to have some just plain old personal aggravation as a side dish. Yep, there is evil in the world and sometimes it is present in a window falling off.

So I have spent hours trying to figure this out. Trying to understand if there is some lesson that I should be getting or some profound message that is being sent. I have struggled with whether I have done something recently that has unleashed a torrent of evil in my families direction, though I know that is the perception of a flawed theology. None the less, you know you think it too when a bunch of stuff happens to you. I have asked, what have I done to deserve this? I have given my life over to helping others get closer to God, Danelle has given herself over to helping young people discover their passion and embrace their future. These are vocations that would seemingly be replete with opportunities for selfless giving and long hours but would provide abundant blessings, yet evil seems to beset us on every side.

I understand Lamentations and the lament Psalms when the writers spoke of the enemy surrounding them and prospering while all they had to eat were tears. I also know that the best lessons are the hardest learned, yet that does not diminish the pain of the present. I will just have to endure a little longer. I remain:

In the Desert,
Marty Cauley

Gracious God, I know that you are a Savior in the desert who leads His people through. Give us the strength to learn without becoming hardened and to grow without becoming jaded. In the name of the suffereing Saviour, Jesus. Amen.