That which is crooked

And when they bring you before the synagogues and the rulers and the authorities, do not be anxious about how you should defend yourself or what you should say, for the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say.

~Luke 12:12

It's not an uncommon question - the one about how someone can believe in a good, all-powerful God when bad things happen. We've had this conversation quite a number of times with our oldest daughter, and the other night it came up again, and I'm still marveling at the response I was given in that moment to give to her. (And, as is often the case, the response was as much for me as it was for her, I believe!)

So, why does God allow/make bad things happen???

Here's how I answered that question last week.

God lets bad things happen to people because he uses those things to change us and make us into the kind of people he wants us to become. (Yeah, yeah - that sounds like some sort of pat answer...and then this came to me...) Think about your upcoming surgery. You really like Dr. H. and you trust him. Well, in a few weeks, we're going to see Dr. H. and he's going to do some really rough stuff to you - he's going to break your bones! Not just once, but multiple times in multiple places, and he's going to cut and reattach tendons and muscles. It's going to hurt!! It's going to stink! (Literally - six weeks in a cast??? Pew!!!) And when the casts come off, you're going to be weaker than you are now, and nothing's going to be the way it used to be. But why are we going to let him break you? Why do you want him to break you? Because we know that he has a vision for what you can be, and you, and the rest of us, are all excited about that vision. There is a purpose in the pain he is going to cause you, and we all know that if there were any less painful, less damaging way to get to that purpose, he would do it. But this is the gentlest way there is to get you from here to there. He wants to take what is crooked in you and break you so that he can make it straight.

Ooof. So many analogies break down rather quickly, but the more I mull on this one, the more direct it becomes. Jesus is our great physician. And, like Dr. H, when the "bad" things happen to us - the painful, hard, truly bone-breaking things, there is great comfort in knowing that not only does our physician bind up the brokenness, but he's also the one causing the brokenness. I am much more comfortable with an orthopedic surgeon that wants to do the bone breaking himself before realigning than with one who wants to just send me out and allow some thugs to break my bones, and then see what he can do to put them back together. Sorry. I want the doctor who does the breaking on his own because then I know the breaking, the pain, is all happening precisely as it ought.

I form light and create darkness; I make well-being and create calamity; I am the Lord, who does all these things. ~Isaiah 45:7

We've talked a few times in our conversations about the beginning of the book of Job, and the great comfort there is in knowing that Satan does nothing without the permission of God, and anything he does do is completely within the boundaries that are set by God. ("Behold, all that he has is in your hand. Only against him do not stretch out your hand," and so Satan both does and doesn't just as he's instructed. And later, "Behold, he is in your hand; only spare his life," and again, that line can not be crossed.) There are enough challenges in my life that I need to know that not a single one of them is outside of God's plan.

Back up to the doctor analogy, even the words that came into my mind that night to describe what Dr. H is going to do to her legs is scarily relevant - he wants to take what is crooked, and break it so it can be made straight! Oh, how many ways I am crooked! And it seems that the further along I get, the more crookedness I can see. It permeates everything. And how I long to be made perfect! (See Hebrews 10:14) So, in the midst of a more-than-typically challenging last two months, I've been given this picture of how my surgeon is breaking me in just the right ways to be able to correct that which is crooked in me. Knowing that doesn't make the current challenges (which are physical, spiritual, mental - you name it!) any easier, but it does help me to redirect my focus. We don't really know what the end result is going to look like for Bobbi. We have good reason to hope that she will be able to do some real-life all-by-herself walking when she's made a full recovery, but we don't really know what that will look like. I, likewise, don't know exactly what I am being prepared for, but I know that I can trust the One who's doing the surgery.

~~~

[Bathroom update]

Matt, when he gets the chance, is a much more productive worker than I am. After my feeble attempt at cleaning off the shelf, he came in the next day, and now this is what that north wall of the existing bathroom (which is the south wall of the new one), looks like:

First - the shelf. It's gone.

Gloria on the stool by the existing toilet looking through the opening where the window used to be - plastic is up getting ready to knock out the rest of the wall!

And this is what it looks like now. The blue rigid insulation at the bottom keeps the cats out until we're ready. (Part of the myriad of challenges we're dealing with right now includes one of our three cats dying - she's 19 - and another one deciding that she's going to now urinate wherever she pleases around the house, which in turn is prompting our boy cat to do the same, a problem he's had on and off since we put the original addition on five years ago. Yes, these are very benign in the whole scheme of things, but they just add one more layer to the story of the last few weeks, and mean that there are No Cats Allowed in that bathroom addition until it's tiled!!) The curtain above means that if Dad gets a few minutes to work out there, the rest of us can still use the toilet in a semi-private fashion!