Worried in a Wanton World

Every man's life is impacted by a wide variety of things. Some of those things that impact us are things of which we are absolutely aware right away. On the other hand, there are things that God works together, through His Sovereignty, that have a huge impact on our life and yet, we are largely unaware of them.

When I was young, I felt everything was always perfect. My parents never made any mistakes, and there were never issues that had "gray area" to them. Right was right and wrong was wrong, and the answer was always easy to find—just ask the adult closest to you.

Of course, then I grew up (a little) and realized that decisions are not always easy. Determining the correct thing to do often took asking SEVERAL grown ups, who then give you conflicting advice, praying about it over and over again, and then finally settling on something that you just didn't quite 100% feel was the right move, but you needed to take some action.

While I think as adults we realize that it is sometimes possible for opposing sides to both be correct, I think more often than not, it is merely a sign of the curse. We live in, are surrounded by, and are completely affected by sin. This means that we are often left with a distorted view of what should be.

For example, my wife and I have been happily married for a few years now (3 out of 14 ain't bad, I guess). In this time, our disagreements have been mostly small, but one revolves around the existence of light in our room, especially as the hour for sleep comes around. I am like a little child who is afraid of the dark, while she is like a mature person who likes it pitch black.

Then, I leave town for a week and upon my return, mysteriously, the light in our room had been "broken" by one of the children. They didn't just turn it off, take out the bulb, or break something a fat man with a small handyman skill-set could fix, but rather the entire chain that one must pull to make the light come on is jammed.

Now, the truth is that I've been fortunate enough to never question whether I received a heaping helping of God’s grace in my marriage covenant relationship, but the curse distorts my view. I am unable to see the truth of the light because I want to blame my absence or my children’s lack of concern over my fear of the dark, when what I should see is that my wife and children love and care for me, and they want me to see clearly, but things on this earth are not perfect.

The reality is that this is the same plight we have in our every day lives with those we work, live, and play. We may want them to see the truth of the light, but the fact is the curse is distorting their view. The sin in which they are inundated and surrounded is collapsing around them, and they are unable to see clearly what is correct. While we long for the day when we shall see perfectly, we must continue for now in this cursed world.

The best way around this is to show those, around whom we live, work, and play, the love of God whenever we can. And perhaps this means to occasionally let them know that our outlook, too, was distorted by sin’s curse and we just couldn’t see clearly. Now, if you were expecting me to write about the things about which we are unaware, you allocate much more knowledge to me than I actually possess. As I do not know those things that are unknown, I just wrote about how we try to live rightly in a cursed world, where there are those things for which we must trust God’s Sovereignty.