Life is unpredictable. A fatal illness could strike us or someone we love at any time. Violence may erupt and take our life or a life we treasure. Economic disasters can happen unexpectedly. How can we feel secure?
Life can be scary. We try to control it. We try to protect ourselves from hurt. We take precautions: we save money; we exercise; we work hard at our jobs; we try to do the right things.
We fail repeatedly, and we know it. We know that we cannot do enough. There is no program of diet and exercise that will keep us from growing old. None that will ensure that we don't get cancer or have a heart attack.
There is no amount of money that can make us feel secure, because we learn to need all that we have. There is no investment strategy that will guarantee our future. Financial losses make us feel poor and vulnerable, regardless of our actual need.
We live our lives at high speed, trying to distance ourselves from the fact of our vulnerability. It doesn't work. In the middle of the night, fear catches up with us.
Some of us try to protect ourselves by feigning indifference. We act cool and philosophical, but we know deep down that this is just a story we're telling ourselves.
Some of us are pretty good story-tellers, which is sad because to the extent that we believe that our lives don't matter, our souls have died.
Our lives are important. We want to know that when bad things happen to us, it matters.
An indifferent universe is a cold place to live in. I know I will suffer; I want my suffering to have meaning.
Impersonal forces don't care whether I suffer. Everything-that-exists is not a God to whom my life matters.
Only a personal, loving God can care about what happens to me and to you.
My security is based on one fact: God is there, and knows, and cares about me and about you.
I don't know what other basis there could be for security. We certainly aren't masters of our own fates, regardless of what we want to tell ourselves in story and song.
Oh, we do get to make choices, many of them, and our character shows in those choices. But we see time and again the most noble and courageous of us being struck down.
If there is no higher meaning, no ultimate justice, then there is no meaning at all, no justice at all, no security at all.
I don't believe that grim picture, although it presents itself when life is especially hard. It doesn't have the feel of a big truth.
If I believe that the world is indifferent, then nothing makes sense. It all grows dark.
When I remember God, his love, his nearness to us all, then life makes more sense. He gives me something solid to stand on.
Events point to something beyond themselves, something far better than the life we know now.
That sense of God's design and nearness brings with it a peace that is not superficial and foolish optimism. The peace that God gives is deep and quiet.
God's presence and love is our security. He is the reason our lives matter. But to know that we first have to know him.
Read on . . .