Opus 2024-284: Varieties of Providence

We have frequent statements about how God will care for us, and provide for us.  If we were simple minded, and couldn’t remember other passages of scripture, we might think that that means that everything will be a fairy tale that ends with, “...and they all lived happily ever after.”  It doesn’t seem to work that way because we see many times where people don’t go marching off into the sunset, singing songs, and counting their money.  Instead, they have enough to go on and enough to get by as a promise that God will provide.

Consider Cain and Abel.  Cain killed Abel.  God sent him away into exile, but he called out to God saying that people would kill him and yet God promised to put a mark on him that would keep people from doing that.  Not a happy ending, but God‘s hand was still on him.

When Sarah told Abraham to have a child through her maid everything was cheerful.  She didn’t have much to say about it being a slave.  When she got pregnant and had a baby, everything changed.  Sarah turned against her and made her life miserable.  She fled into the desert with your boy.  She had given up and was preparing to die.  God intervened, provided water and sent her on her way with a blessing.  Again, I don’t think she drove off in an air-conditioned RV.  I don’t think she suddenly had flocks of sheep and camels.  Life was not easy, but she went with the hand of God upon her.

As humans, we try to develop patterns to give herself a sense of security.  We develop charts and graphs.  We list things in the hierarchy.  We use percentages and statistics.  That may work very well when we’re talking about a wheat harvest or what kind of car we want to buy, but it doesn’t work very well when we talk about God.

Think of God as a whack-a-mole.  Every time you think you have him in the box He pops out another place.  When you think you have it figured out, He throws you a curve ball.  When you think He’s going for the long bomb, He goes up the middle.  We can think of a million illustrations.  God will not be locked into our systems.  It may help, but we need to keep in mind that they are inadequate.  God in one sense is beyond us.  Actually He is beyond us in every sense.  Accept that.  Be glad.  You would not want me in charge of your security.

homo unius libri