God in Control

TROWEL & SWORD

Resources - Meditations

September 2000

THIS AND THAT

God in Control

Harry Burggraaf

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.” “Ah Sovereign Lord,” I said, “I do not know how to speak; I am only a child.” (Jeremiah 1:5,6)

“I am not made for perilous quests,” cried Frodo. “I wish I had never seen the Ring! Why did it come to me? Why was I chosen?”
“Such questions can not be answered.” said Gandalf. “You must be sure that it was not for any merit that others do not possess; nor for power or wisdom, at any rate. But you have been chosen and you must therefore use such strength and heart and wits as you have.” (J.R.R. Tolkien)

Sometimes we want to give up; on being a parent; on being an employee; on being a partner; on being a Christian; on life generally. It’s all too tough really. Living at the beginning of a new century, with all the pressures and moral perils, is just too difficult.

We think of giving up on parenthood when an irate neighbour rings to say one of our kids has dented his car, playing cricket in the street and what will we do about it? We groan for release when the boss gives us yet another task, which will take us far longer than normal working hours to complete. We feel like giving up when there is another complaint about something in the church that has put someone’s nose out of joint and they’re threatening to leave. We feel like spitting the dummy when our parents just seem too unreasonable with their expectations.

Most of us can identify with the experience of a role that seems too demanding; a task that appears too difficult; a challenge that looks insurmountable; a context that is too confusing.

God asked Jeremiah to do a job he thought he couldn’t do. He called him to be a prophet. Not an enviable vocation at a time when people were more interested in their own affairs than in following God. A prophet calls people to repentance and obedience, to sacrificial living, to integrity, compassion, generosity. A prophet wakes people up from sleepy complacency into active service. A prophet rips away disguises and drags heartless attitudes and selfish motives out into the open. A prophet makes it difficult for people to continue with a sloppy and selfish life.

“Ah, Lord, that’s not for me,” says Jeremiah, “I am only a youth!”

“I can’t... I am only... I haven’t the abilities”, is a common refrain for most of us. In a complex, changing, morally volatile and unsure world, life, in fact, is too much for us. Too much is being asked of us. We cannot cope. We cannot manage.

The business of living in awareness and response to God, in attentive love to people, and in a way that is relevant to the world around us, is, in fact, beyond our capacities.

Christian parenting is beyond our capacity, as is Christian marriage, business, education, leisure, because we live in an evil world, and because “the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately corrupt” (Jeremiah 17:9).

The world is a frightening place, and if we are not a little bit scared we simply don’t know what is going on. The famous philosopher, Paschal, said, “Fear not, provided you fear; but if you fear not, then fear.”

There is an enormous gap between what we think we can do and what God calls us to do. For Jeremiah the gap is bridged by a double vision – the branch of a blossoming almond tree, and a boiling pot (Jeremiah 1:11-16).

In Jeremiah’s social and political context the blossoming almond is a symbol of promise; that God is watching and will do what He says. The boiling pot is a symbol of protection; that God will contain evil and will not allow it to flourish without limit.

It is impossible to live by faith without some kind of sustaining vision. We need reminders that God both promises to watch and walk with us in whatever task he calls us to, and that evil is under his ultimate judgement.

As a parent I am sometimes frightened by the influences of evil that confront families. As a worker I do not like the way economic rationalism has shaped the workplace with its downsizing and redundancy mentality. As an elder in the church I lament the seeming lack of loyalty by many people to their local congregation. I do not like the shape of many things in our society.

Yet the vision of the blossoming almond branch and the boiling pot is an assurance, even in the twentieth century, that evil, in whatever guise, is not wild and uncontrollable, because God is in charge of His world. We cannot afford to be naive about it, but neither should we be intimidated. Eugene Peterson remarks that, “It is one of the most extraordinary aspects of the good news that God uses bad men to accomplish His good purposes and the great paradox of judgement is that evil becomes fuel in the furnace of salvation.”

The Christian life in the twentieth century is a ‘perilous quest for which we are not made’. “But you have been chosen and you must therefore use such strength and heart and wits as you have.”

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