Meditation on the Text of the Week

It's Always Personal

Are not two sparrows sold for a cent? And yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Therefore, do not fear; you are of more value than many sparrows.
Matthew 10: 29—31

God is the all conditioning Conditioner. He is the totalitarian ruler of all reality. These statements by our Lord underscore this truth in a dramatic way. He states that even the most secular and pedestrian affairs of our existence are totally controlled by God. In the context of the text our Lord is using this truth to comfort and encourage His people in the face of hostility and persecution.

The totalitarian providential control of the Living God over all things is something which is so vast, so complex, and so mysterious that it leads us to the awe of silence. Here is but one perspective. If we consider a world-wide event—maybe an international calamity, such as the planes being flown into the Twin Towers. Most of us can remember when we first heard the news and many circumstances in our lives at the time. Or maybe an event with a global impact such as the credit collapse of the last two years.

Here is one calamity brought upon the world by the Lord. The effects are corporate yet also extremely granular. The one event transmits effects right down to the most random of circumstances in individual lives. After 9-11 months and months later somewhere in the world a traveler is held up amidst long lines caused by increased airport security and misses an appointment. Yet that granular circumstance bringing frustration and great irritation to that one individual person has been designed and ordained by God for that individual on that day from the beginning of time.

The effects and consequences flowing across the globe from 9-11 to millions and millions of people are those which have been precisely and perfectly and completely and exhaustively ordained by God. The circumstances in each individual life have been so superintended and commanded by God that the direct and indirect impact of 9-11 in each individual life comes with the precise nuance of cause and effect that the Lord has ordained for each and every person on each and every day.

Or again, we realise that it is not only nations and businesses which have been affected by the global credit crunch. Thousands upon thousands, if not millions, have lost jobs, changed jobs, gone back to school, lost their homes, made new plans, given up old plans and for each individual and family the precise affect of the nuanced cause and effect has been exactly as the Lord commanded and provisioned. Day by succeeding day; moment by succeeding moment.

This is what we are taught by the Lord's statement that even the hairs on our head are numbered and that every sparrow which falls does so at the precise will and exhaustingly particular command of the infinite and eternal God.

This means, of course, that the world and all the circumstances of our lives are neither random nor impersonal. Rather, even the most apparently inconsequential and random particulars are personally designed by the Lord for us. When Unbelievers hear this, particularly in the “entitlementistic” West, they cry out that God must be evil and wicked for so many bad things happen which are both unpleasant and unwanted.

But the truth could not be more contrary. It is man who is evil and wicked and the bad things which happen to individuals are a personal warning and reminder that whereas God has given many good gifts to every person, and has sent the sun to shine upon all mankind, many have used His generous gifts and provision to stimulate yet further unbelief and superstition toward God, and neglect and dismissiveness of Him. Every hard and difficult providence comes as a sober warning to all who live in rebellion against the Lord. The oft-repeated personal message is: repent and turn to me before it is too late. Your life is a vapour. It is soon over. The things you consider so stable and strong, O man, are dust and ashes. The Lord sends thousands upon thousands of warnings daily to all who continue to resist Him—each perfectly designed and crafted, nuanced and particular, personal and intimate. For one it is the sudden realisation of middle age. For another it is a sudden shooting pain which portends infirmity or disease. For another, it is the collapse of financial markets wiping out stored wealth. For another, it is the loss of a loved one.

In the latter half of the previous century some nuclear physicists postulated that the core of matter, sub-atomic structures are random. They should have been more precise: they meant that the core of matter is so complex and various that it can only be seen by man as random. Yet to God, in His mind and commands, every apparent random particulate is decreed, commanded and ordained at every instant and for all time.

The same truth and reality applies to God's exhaustive providential control over all the circumstances and experiences of all human souls. To us, the implicit complexity is so vast that it appears random. On one ordinary day an anonymous person left for work, as they have done these past twenty years, at the same hour, walking to the same bus stop. But on one particular day a “random” car lost control and crashed into the footpath, hitting and subsequently paralyzing the person, changing his life forever.

That one apparently random circumstance was perfectly designed and nuanced not only for that anonymous victim but for all who came to know of it and be affected by it: his family, his colleagues, the ambulance staff, the driver of the uncontrolled car, the police. The effects of pain, anger, sadness, grief, guilt, and confusion each had their place, their personal divine intent and message for all.

In our world, even the ordinary and the profane is holy and fearful and wondrous because of Who God is.