Predictability can be boring—you know, like when you watch the same TV show over and over, or you have the same breakfast cereal for days in a row, or like those things we always count on. However, it can become the most encouraging life force we know.
I’m sitting on my front porch waiting for the sun to rise. It’s one of those summer mornings I long for all year. It’s just cool enough to launch a chilled shudder but warm enough to justify shorts and sandals. Even now the sun has grown into a brightening orange ball just off to my left, and its upward climb is so rapid, it’s hard to imagine the rest of today’s journey will take over fourteen hours. I know the science—why the sun seems to squirt up from behind the horizon like a ping pong ball from a pop gun, then slow to an almost unperceivable crawl—but I’m still fascinated by it.
I love the sunrise. We know within a split second of when it will occur today, tomorrow…even a hundred years from now. Not only does it provide immeasurable life-giving qualities, it also provides a foundational element to our lives that’s easy to overlook—It’s completely predictable.
I won’t attempt to speak for you, but these recent radical and rapid shifts in our society’s cultural values leaves me breathless. Once predictable moral values based on the Scriptures are now openly declared archaic…obsolete. I believe I know my readers and so I want to make it clear: this is not intended to be a diatribe on moral values. That would be like preaching to the choir. But, I do want to take this privileged opportunity to confirm that even in the midst of today’s shifting moral sands, there remains a predictable force who promises to protect the most valuable part of our being—our very souls.
I was raised by parents whose lives were consistently directed by circumstances. We seldom had the resources to replace a broken appliance or a broken-down automobile. So when something broke, and it always did, we either rolled up our sleeves and repaired it or we put it in the front yard and planted flowers in it. I don’t recall my parents wasting time complaining about circumstances. I only recall their constructive responses.
As a result, even today, I tend to believe life isn’t out to get me, but rather I have been providentially designed to make the most of whatever life presents. Today’s cultural shifts strike me as sad and unfortunate, but they also challenge me to make the most of a bad situation. I can either add to the solution, or I can add to the problem. My upbringing taught me that complaining about the situation only adds to the problem.
As a minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, I am challenged to lift up the Good News. God is still in the Heavens. Jesus is still on the throne of all creation. These foundation-damaging changes in our current culture, though disheartening, change nothing in God’s greater scheme of things. God, who Himself has commissioned the rising of the sun with pin-point predictability, continues to love us all—saint and sinner—and His message of forgiveness and grace will continue up and until that predicted day He promises to return and make a glorious planter out this sin-battered planet.
The bible challenges us with unashamed abandon—
“Keep your eyes on Jesus, who both began and finished this race we’re in. Study how he did it. Because he never lost sight of where he was headed—that exhilarating finish in and with God—he could put up with anything along the way: cross, shame, whatever. And now he’s there, in the place of honor, right alongside God.” Hebrews 12:2
Life seems unpredictable and we struggle to fix what’s broken. But this one thing is predictable—we can trust in the One who will protect and sustain what can’t be broken.
Read Ron’s column, Simple Faith, each Saturday on the Faith Page (page 3) of the Lancaster Eagle Gazette, or visit www.lancastereaglegazette.com.