Day 3, Orderly

1 In the beginning, God created everything: the heavens above and the earth below. Here’s what happened: 2 At first the earth lacked shape and was totally empty, and a dark fog draped over the deep while God’s spirit-wind hovered over the surface of the empty waters. Then there was the voice of God. Genesis 1:1-2 The Voice

As a professional soldier, turned English teacher, I love good order and discipline. I like papers turned in on time. I embrace the orderliness of the Oxford comma. I loathe empty spots in my gradebook. Gazing out over a classroom with students busy at their tasks creates a sense of contentment and rightness within my spirit. As a commander in the Army, I always enjoyed soldiers arrayed in formation. The common shapes stretching out in ordered ranks and files told me that all was right in my little piece of the military world. Some portion of my heart, soul, or spirit longs for order. Genesis reminds us that God shares a similar desire.

We get precious few details about creation, mostly that God spoke, and amazing things happened. Sadly, instead of embracing the marvelous wonder of the moment, we’ve turned this great wonder into some sort of spiritual litmus test, a grid with which to screen out unfaithful undesirables. But this stands out, God speaks order out of chaos. In some fashion, God wants things just so. He wants form and structure, not shapeless disarray.

As I gaze out across the landscape of our world, I see brokenness. I see great disorder. I see confusion. I find that I’m a scattered, disordered man. In almost every arena of human endeavor chaos reigns. And our chaos spills out marring the beautiful creation that sprang from the mind of God. His children suffer so from our disorder. I find that, even my little parochial school, chaos often reigns in the lives of my students. They endure pain they did not create. Their path twists and turns through a confusing morass. But God did not visit this disarray upon them. Sometimes they choose poorly. Sometimes their parents chose poorly. But instead, God chooses to break into the disorder through His son, the incarnate word.