The first church I worked for after I finished my undergraduate degree almost 23 years ago had a number of interesting members who inspired me to make sure my life did not follow in their footsteps. One of these people was an older man who had lost his wife a few years earlier and now spent a great deal of time volunteering at the building. He gave a sizable amount to the church each year which helped a number of people overlook some of his oddities.
He had his own parking space under a covered drop off near the church office doors. I learned the hard way it was a bad idea for anyone else to park in his covered space. When an unsuspecting person did this he would park very close beside their car and bang his car door against the other car.
Since he was at the church building so much during the week he became the energy saving watchdog. If you were in the restroom it was best to take a flashlight. If you needed to make a copy on the Xerox machine you would need to allow an additional 4 minutes for the machine to warm up because he would not allow the machine to stay turned on between copies. He was known to turn off electric breakers to make sure everything was off. On more than one occasion I lost my data on the computer because I could not save to my floppy disk drive fast enough when I would hear him flipping all of the breakers off. He never understood the difference between a computer and a typewriter...
But the most odd thing I discovered about him was why he was alone. He and his wife were married sometime around World War 2 and they decided to never have children because they did not want to bring a child into such a messed up world. The day he told me this I was taken back and was not sure how to respond. In the subsequent years I have time and again chewed on the reasoning for his decision.
Without a doubt the world is imperfect and will be so until God brings this present age to a close and fully reveals his kingdom. We know that I John 5:19 tells us that this whole world is under the control of the evil one. But we also know that God and his forces are actively at work in this world. We know that throughout history God's people have lived by faith as can be powerfully seen in Hebrews 11. So the question becomes, do we trust God to take care of us in an imperfect world or do we panic?
People throughout history have reacted out of panic because they thought things were so bad that they could never get better. The Anasazi who built cliff dwellings in what is now southwestern Colorado are believed to have moved onto the cliff faces out of a perceived threat. At the end of World War 2 much of the population of an island in the Pacific jumped to their death because they believed when the United States liberated their island life would not be worth living.
A lifestyle characterized by panic ultimately misses the point of the Bible. God created the world, sin damaged the world separating us from God, and God began a plan involving his son to redeem all of creation. This damaged world is not our destiny, it is simply our journey. Our destiny is with God. God will bring this present age ruled by sin to an end. We will be resurrected with new bodies just like Jesus was resurrected. We will live on a redeemed and restored earth able to literally walk with God. The kingdom of God glimpsed when Jesus walked the earth will become the norm. There will be no more pain, no more suffering, no more crying, no more sadness, no more hunger.
There is no need to live a life of panic because we can live expectantly with the hope we have of resurrection and eternal life. We can live with confidence if we have received God's precious gift of salvation offered through the blood of Jesus. There is no need to panic about work, school, politics, church or anything else we tend to get worked up over. Instead we can live filled with peace, love, joy, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and self control- not because anything in this world warrants this type of life, instead we live a life of faithful calm because God is our god.
We panic because we try to control what we cannot control. Faith in God recognizes this world is messed up and we can't fix it, only God can. Relax and trust God, it'll be o.k., it really will.
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