It seems unlikely.
I am far too busy cruising the interwebs and eavesdropping on people's lives, real and imagined, to do any useful work. And there are way too many thoughts banging around in my head to settle into the rhythm of tv-supported laundry folding. So we'll just let those thoughts bang themselves out and around see what happens.
We bought a car this week. It was difficult and stressful and annoying. Forty-eight hours later, I realize that it wasn't unusually so - it was a car purchase from a car dealer and it just is what it is. But in the moment, it all feels like more than that. I become strangely religious and start believing in a God who uses poorly-dressed used car salesmen to relay His Will On Car Purchases (which is always, in case you didn't know this, This Is a Bad Idea and Probably Sin). And suddenly the balance that holds me together day to day is lost and I am unhinged, thrown into a mess of guilt and fear and anger and sadness and all the other bad feelings that I mostly hold at bay the rest of the time. It made me realize that there is just very little in the way of bad that comes my way and when it does I have no resources for coping with it.
When bad hard things happen to other people, I have a great deal of faith that it isn't personal. Kids don't get cancer because their parents are bad people. Their houses aren't robbed because they have too many possessions. Their parents aren't killed in accidents because they didn't deserve love. God doesn't hand out goodies to his favourites and haze the losers. Or maybe what I mean is, we're all the favourites. And when bad things happen to us, it isn't because of us, because of some lesson we need to learn or some other higher goal God is trying to achieve that makes our okayness expendable. It's just because bad things happen. I tell people that the promise isn't that bad things won't happen. It's that we'll have a friend on our team to get us to the other side of them.
You know, I just read a friend's blog where she tells the story of her daughter being treated badly at a birthday party (didn't see this connection coming - I sure do miss writing). She was nearby at the same park with her other daughter and was able to intervene and coach her daughter through it, and debrief it with her later on. Imagine if the story was that Mummy sent Daughter to a party and then arranged for the other girls to be mean because she wanted her to learn that all humanity is sinful and the only person Daughter should trust is Mummy. It's ludicrous. Mummy taught that she was trustworthy by witnessing the pain, stepping in to participate and then making space for Daughter to work it out later, all the time telling her, You Are Dearly Loved. If a mother, sinful and earthbound though she may be, can love this way, does not our Father in Heaven do the same and even better?
So if that's what the Kingdom is really like, then the hard parts of the car purchase weren't set up by God to teach us to steward our money better or to steer us to another car that would be more Pleasing to The Lord. The hard parts were just hard parts and God was just nearby watching and jumping in with me when I turned heavenward and said "HELP!" And now, thanks to the miracle of the interwebs, we get to debrief it together and I get to be reminded that I Am Dearly Loved and that all will be well. Even if it is the wrong car.
Maybe the kitchen will get tidied now...
