The Goodness of God in the Evening Breeze
Life is so good, sometimes I forget that God is under no obligation to make it so. This is where so many people get hung up on faith, I think: How can a God who is supposed to be good allow bad things to happen? It's the burning question, isn't it?
We wonder about big things, of course, like cancer, war, famine, natural disaster, suffering on a grand scale, and the most ugly, fearsome father of it all: death.
But seemingly little, personal things are just as troubling, aren't they?
"I didn't get that job. Now look where we are."
"My friend betrayed me."
"I can't kick this illness/pain."
"The timing of this is just...awful."
Why, why, WHY?
My divorce. My wayward kid. My bully. My addiction. My inner-demon. My parents. My pride. And on and on. Isn't God out there? Can't he hear me? Why won't he make himself known? He's supposed to be good and kind and loving and merciful. His mercies are supposed to be new every day. This feels like a dead end. It feels like a sort of death.
I could go on for 10,000 words, describing the senseless, often preventable suffering in this world. Despite all of our knowledge, our GPS, our technology, our information, our compassion, our money, our resources, our superior intellect, we have not figured out how to eliminate it, or even to alleviate it. Isn't that remarkable? All the lessons humans have learned over the ages and we still make the same mistakes. We still suffer for the same stupid reasons.
Yet, for all that is wrong in the world, I can still sit on my patio, which isn't really even mine. I just get to stay here for a little while. On it I have placed a cushioned chair and a table. A cup of coffee. A notebook and a pen. A pleasant breeze. A dog at my feet. The sun is up. The kids are not. Just for a moment, this is really good. LIFE is really good. My life. It isn't perfect. It would be melodramatic of me to say that I suffer but have my demons, I suppose, just like everyone. For this moment they are quiet and THIS, my life, is beautiful.
I think this is what Adam and Even felt in the garden after they ate the fruit. They didn't die like God said would happen. Maybe there was a shaky sigh of relief as they walked away from the serpent, who, as it turned out, wasn't totally dishonest with them after all. But something was broken in them and they knew it because they hid in shame. It's difficult to fathom the dread they must have felt as they tried in vain to cover themselves, attempting to bandage what they broke by sticking a band-aid made of fig leaves to a wound that gushed and disfigured their souls.
I can only imagine (because the bible doesn't say) that before their eyes, what was once paradise became pestilence. The flies and mosquitoes probably started bothering them. The sun burned too bright and caused them to perspire. Maybe Adam's sinuses began to swell with an allergic reaction to the pollen in the air.
And then God did something surprising. Genesis 3:8 describes, "cool evening breezes." Isn't that an interesting detail to include in this spare narrative? God knew of their transgression, right down to the second it happened. He understood it, probably better than they understood it themselves. Yet he sent them the small comfort and joy and sweetness of a cool evening breeze. He did that anyway. An undeserved gift.
The hammer came down, as they knew it would. They took the curse and walked out of the garden, sorrowful, humiliated, and realizing, finally, that God was truthful from the beginning. There was a death sentence. It just wouldn't be carried out right away. They would get to live out their lives and yes, there would be suffering before it was all over, but there would also be "cool evening breezes." There would be knowing smiles, and inside jokes, and laughter, and joy, and beauty. There would be family, there would be friendship, there would even be art.
They deserved none of those things and neither do I. God gives those gifts anyway and perhaps he adds to them the greatest gift of all--the dreaded death sentence. With death comes the release from the suffering of this life. Death brings life eternal. Without death, there would be a never-ending life of shame and separation, which would be far, far worse than any suffering humans have concocted for ourselves on this broken earth.
Yes. God is still good.
I'm so sick of doing life alone and I long to be with my husband again and no, things are not perfect in our marriage--no one gets to say that. Sometimes he is selfish and sometimes I am selfish. We had a particularly difficult time in our marriage a couple of years ago when I wanted to throttle my husband and was so mad at him I wouldn't speak to him for days. Some might have said that I would have been justified in leaving him but no matter how much my feelings were hurt I couldn't deny that deep down he was a good man, and I picked him, and I considered myself "stuck" with him. Now that we are past that trial we had, I can say it with a smile. And I can tell you what a GIFT it is to be married and to have a partner in life--even when he is on the other side of the world.
Deployment is NOT the end of the world. It is not the worst thing that could happen to a marriage. There are ways to stay close and connected and we are SO BLESSED with technology that keeps us in contact every single day. It is hard work, yes. It's not the same as having him here with me. It's not what I would choose. And I have no idea what it's going to be like when he's actually home and we have to relearn how to do life together after being apart for essentially a year and a half (with a few hectic weeks thrown in there between training and deployment). But life rarely turns out how you plan it. It just doesn't. You don't always get to choose how things will be and even if you did, there is a limit to what you can know about the future so your choices will be flawed and leave you with a feeling of discontent. All you can do is to learn to be content in every circumstance--whether you have a little or a lot, whether your stomach is full or empty, whether you wanted things to be this way or that. This is not some kind of phony "positive thinking" mind game you play with yourself. It can sometimes only be accomplished through prayer and dependence on something you believe is in control when you realize you are not.