I recently wrote a WHAT IS LIFE? column. Mostly it was about how unpredictable life can be (one ‘danged’ thing after another), one day you are sailing serenely, the other you are mired in deep depression because of some “by chance” circumstance. How does one deal (explain?) these seemingly inconsistencies of life? I tell my Sunday school teacher when we run into a discussion topic that for all practical (human) purposes has no apparent answer that he should: #1 simply admit he does not know the answer and leave it at that or #2, leave the answer up to God. That may seem to be a cop out in a way, but it is at least one avenue to an acceptable understanding.
Harold Kushner’s book WHEN BAD THINGS HAPPEN TO GOOD PEOPLE is an attempt to reconcile this perplexing statement that from a human point of view is way beyond most peoples’ understanding even those who say they harbor deep religious beliefs. Some events in life simply do not seem ‘fair’ in that they don’t make sense if one believes that there is a kind Know-It-All in charge who is the essence of love. Disclaimer: I do not have the answers to these questions but this does not cause me to dismiss the goodness/fairness of a Supreme Being even though this understanding is meager to say the least; still that is where ‘faith’ comes in. Faith, the Bible says is “The evidence of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.“ Hebrews 11:1. When you question God with a WHY?, He has the ultimate answer/reply: WHY NOT?
Most columns I write have a genesis that is the result of say an event, a conversation, a reading or remark that leads me to write about my thought on a particular subject. This column about a telephone conversation is no exception.
The occasion cited was one anticipated, a dream come true, the end of a productive life of service, a goodbye to the routine of a job well done, a farewell to the inexorable obedience to the clock: retirement finally! It was a moment to savor, an emotional high, although not without already anticipating life without the satisfaction of being needed, a separation from those nearby friendships that were always available when there were spells when life was not all a bed of roses. But these doubts were dismissed because now there was real meaning in the Dr. Martin Luther King Dream Speech: “Free at last! Thank God almighty, free at last!” That line epitomized the exhilaration that retirement promised. But then the next page in the book of life is not always predictable.
The physical examination was a mere routine event. It was simply a repetition of one that had been carried out many times to the point of it being a non event. The results were always negative but this being the last day on the job, just get this out of the way and get on with the good life awaiting. Let the good times roll!
Modern body scanning equipment is fast, efficient and without emotion, clinically indifferent. The test was made and before the last day on the job was over, the announced result proved to be less than routine. There was a problem requiring further investigation.
Robert Frost in his poem THE ROAD NOT TAKEN places the reader in a dilemma when he/she has to decide which of the two paths in the road would be taken. There is no turning back; an unavoidable decision has to be made.
That’s true of each of us in real life too. When adversity comes and it will, we too have a choice to make. What will it be? Fight or flight?
Try Isaiah 43:2 / Matthew 28:20, excEllEnt road signs.
This too shall pass.
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Bill Lee, PO Box 128,
Hamer, SC 29547
