The Unceasing Hunt for Order

I’m seeking order, as usual.

My colleague Wendy Lawton and I share a major belief. We both think if we can find an orderly system of management, our life will become simpler, more controllable and efficient.

I’m not sure why Wendy is so convinced, but my past as a military wife bears some responsibility for my dream.

Thirteen times we moved.

Thirteen times I stood in a house surrounded by my possessions all neatly boxed up and stackable. Life was in total order and not even a surly two-year-old could throw anything around.

An ordered life

Similarly, I loved marrying an engineer who, I thought, had a place for everything and everything should go in its place.

I rejoiced with Adrian Monk when he fell in love with a woman because her garage was totally organized. While Natalie, the Captain and Randy passed incredulous looks, I sighed with contentment. Everything in its place.

Where did this desire for order come from?

Why are some “messies” and others obsessive compulsives? And what about the rest of us in between? Why am I looking for order and management to gain control over my life?

Ah, maybe that’s the real crux: control?

We worship an orderly God.

He tells us “come now, let us reason together,” in Isaiah 1:18. That reference is in conjunction with our sin, but can’t you make a case that sinning is getting out of order?

That when we sin, some of us are allowing a base need or desire to control our  Godly sense?

God created order out of chaos when he divided the dark from the light in the opening chapter of Genesis.

He put continents in their places (somewhat flexibly as earthquakes demonstrate) to give a boundary to the sea. He set up his laws so we could understand the difference between sin and not-sinning.

An old friend asked me last summer why I would base my life on the Bible.

I told her I saw the Scriptures as a framework. God gave us boundaries and limits and then we are free to live our lives within that order.

Knowing what’s sin enables me to avoid it, and thus to keep the chaos of guilt at bay.

We live in a world of variables and most of it is out of our control. But Wendy and I optimistically believe that if we could set up systems to keep the variables exceptional rather than the norm, we could get our work done more effectively. The exceptions should be the exceptions, not the rule.

But how do you even put the systems into play to keep the chaos at bay?

You start by examining the entire situation–what causes things to get out of order. Those that can be contained, should be contained.

Those that can’t, like a two-year-old, need boundaries erected and a recognition that dealing with them is, by nature, uncontrollable.

If you can anticipate what you can’t control, you’re halfway to figuring out how to deal with it in an orderly fashion.

Similarly, I’m going to sin today. In fact, I’ve already sinned today in several orners of my life. That’s not surprising to God and alas, not surprising to me either. It will probably happen tomorrow as well.

They key, though, is how I deal with that sin, that lack of control, that choice to be disorderly?

Come now, let us reason together. God has given us a way.

The third book of Lamentations reminds us of what it feels like to fall out of order, and it gives us hope.

²⁰ My soul still remembers
And sinks within me.
²¹ This I recall to my mind,
Therefore I have hope.
²² Through the LORD’s mercies we are not consumed,
Because His compassions fail not.
²³ They are new every morning;
Great is Your faithfulness.

God created the night and the day; he put order into the world. The sun comes up in the east and it goes down in the west. Every day is a new day, full of his mercies and forgiveness.

Which means every day I can wake up knowing order is in the world–somewhere–and that even when things fall apart, His mercy and faithfulness remains secure and we’ll get through this, perhaps not efficiently, but under God’s control.

At least Wendy and I can bank on that.

Thanks be to God.