Friday, July 28, 2017

“Every human being is a problem in search of a solution.” – Ashley Montagu

From “The Human Condition: A User’s Manual” by Arnold Kunst
Reality seems replete with injustice. On the same tree, two apples are subject to the same climatic conditions, the same soil conditions, and the like. Yet the wind that appears to blow equally on both will blow one off the tree onto the ground where it will die, while the other will remain to ripen fully. Life on a fairly regular basis presents me with a steady diet of roughly similar injustice, and if I’m not careful I’ll end up clinging overmuch to what is passing.
The clinging, of course, is understandable. St. Augustine of Hippo says in his Confessions: "You have made us for Yourself, Oh Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You." In short, as for water in a parched land I seek out the security that only heaven will provide, and like a child, I've got problems with delayed gratification. Instead, I understandably cling overmuch to a mother, a spouse, an offspring. And with all the apparent fickleness, all the apparent iniquity of life itself, these can be snatched away from me in the twinkling of an eye.
So how do I reconcile all this with the belief in a prodigiously loving, solicitous God? A God not with a will that He demands I obey but a longing He craves I comply with. What appears to be evil from my puny perspective must not be evil after all, but only apparently so. For now I only see as through a mirror darkly, but then, as Paul says, I shall see face to face; now I know in part, then I shall know even as I am known. If the evil apparent in this or that calamity were what you might call heremetically-sealed evil, He wouldn't allow it to happen - it's that simple. But evil, all manner of evil, does happen, and on a regular basis. For the seed must first fall into the ground and die before it springs forth to give life a hundred fold. He's got it all figured out; it is my place, as it was Job's, to say, "The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away; blessed be the name of the Lord."


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