Fireworks… We enjoyed a great fireworks display last night. Amazing thing when you really think about it…cardboard boxes and tubes filled with something that somehow explodes in so many different patterns, heights, and colors.
We arrived before dark, the fireworks were on floating barges out on water. I sat there looking at it…a large number of boxes, just sitting there. Big deal.
But when it got good and dark, our host pushed the remote that began the series of explosions. We had chosen chairs on the edge of the water, and as the fireworks lit up the sky above us, the smoke began to fill the air, and shreds of paper and ash sprinkled down on us. It was beautiful and awful at the same time.
For the past few weeks, I’ve struggled to come to better understanding of why tragedy happens. Why out of nowhere, it explodes and rains down shattered fragments of our lives, leaving us to choke on the smoke left behind…embers of what used to be beautiful, now singeing and burning us as the memory of the beauty that was, gives way to the reality and stench of the present.
Fireworks are simply raw materials assembled in ways that cause explosions. I’ve had it explained to me, though I can’t restate it. They must be fused, separately or together. There must be a spark. Simply…it’s cause and effect.
Isn’t everything?
God created a world of cause and effect. Everything He created, He created good. (Gen.1) He then issued the memo that informed man of effect. …do not eat of that tree, because the effect is death….do not choose to know evil, because it brings death. That was the message of Genesis 2. Anything other than God and His goodness… anytime we leave Him out of the mix…the effect is death. We are created to be in relationship with Him, He is the life-giving, life-sustaining force. Anything outside of that…the effect is death. Immediate or eventual….even eternal.
All bad things aren’t a result of bad choices. Some definitely are.
Neither does God make all bad things to happen, but He definitely allows all things that do happen.
He is God. He has the final say.
God’s absolute sovereignty and my own personal free will seem to be contradictions. Only God can remain sovereign in the face of my poor choices and rebellion. His will for my life and my rejection of Him are indeed at odds. How can He be all powerful God, and I still have the power to reject His will? Am I greater than He? (ridiculous..)
Sigh…It’s a complicated issue, this sovereignty/free-will thing. And it, like our Creator God, is outside the realm of human logic. (…faith to the rescue again…)
This is what I know. When I choose poorly, it is not because He set me up, and not because He didn’t give me the information necessary to choose best.
He is not incomplete without me, but I will never be complete without Him.
Everything He says is spoken out of pure love…(something I am not capable of..)
He is not in a box. I am. The box of my reality, that He created to share with me.
And sometimes, my box explodes. And when it does, it can be awful and beautiful…sometimes at the same time.
You see…I know that my God makes beauty and good come from even the awful and ugly….if nothing but to empower me thru it, changing, redeeming, and restoring me in spite of it.
The only question I need ponder is if I have chosen poorly, and if I have, to face it together with Him, learning and growing….thereby avoiding any future adverse circumstances or consequences because of my poor choices.
Now…I must move on.
