Job cut me down

Happy New Year.

For the first time in my life I spent New Year's Eve alone. I know it sounds sad, but it was actually the better of two options for me. My family had a stupid little conflict over what to do to celebrate. Originally, my brother Tim had hinted at doing something big for New Year's because 2006 has been so crappy for our family and friends (a divorce, a virtual divorce, adultery, divorce) and it seemed fitting to end it all and try and start over anew in our lives in a big way. Well, as it usually goes in our family, when it gets down to actually deciding what to do there is always a problem. We wanted to go skiing somewhere but the airline tickets were so dang expensive that it just wouldn't have worked. Someone mentioned a few days ago that some hotel near DFW airport has a little New Year's party type thing, and so we sort of planned on doing that, though dancing to forced, live music is not my idea of fun. When it got to last night, everyone was pretty much conflicted on going or not. I got kind of depressed last night at the idea of going and seeing a bunch of couples having fun and laughing, and I know all I would be thinking about was the girl I've lost and remembering all the good times, and that would just kill me even more. Plus, parties with dancing where it feels like people are trying to force me to have fun is not my idea of fun. I'd rather stay home. I guess I'm weird for being this way.

Also, my sister Karen had some issues with going for whatever reason. My brother Michael and his new woman/girlfriend/whatever were confusing us with whether they were going or not. So it all ended up after all the confusion that everyone went but me, because I know I would not have been able to bear it. There are things I can do at home that can occupy my thoughts and keep them off of wanting to slip into depression/suicidal mode.

I went out and drove around a little bit. It was kind of like a movie where the lonely guy walks around in the dark and sees in windows of houses families and friends gathering together having good times, and for a moment he feels like he has lost everything good in his life. I sorta felt that way knowing that so many people right then were with the ones they loved, the persons they wanted to spend the rest of their liveswith. Just to know that I had that and lost it and to be reminded of it by looking at people who appear to have it, it's just kind of surreal like I'm watching a movie of myself that I have no control over, like it's all been determined and directed already and all I can do is observe what others are doing and react to it. It really sort of confronts my idea of how the world works, that being that I can control my own destiny if I just try real hard. I'm more led to believe that things just happen because they're bound to, and that the only real trying I can do is just to deceive myself into thinking that I have some sort of control on how things turn out. I tend to reject the idea that we really have any sort of effect on what happens in our lives, because when things go bad and you are struck with heartache, you always think, "how did this happen to me?", "where did it all go wrong?"

The only conclusion I am left with after all the misery/depression/heartache is that God has a purpose set before the foundations of the Earth (Ephesians 1:4) that is bigger than me and who am I to understand it and who am I that I should have any say in it? How could I question the motives and actions of a holy and righteous God who is all-powerful and all-knowing? I am just a speck in the universe with no power of my own. Where was I when Jesus laid the foundations of the Earth? I didn't set its measurements, or lay its cornerstone. I have never commanded the sun to rise. I cannot bind the chains of the Pleiades or loose the cords of Orion. I have never commanded an eagle to mount up or drawn Leviathan out with a fishhook. I do not know the time the mountain goats give birth or who sets the wild donkey free.* I am nothing compared to the glorious God I worship, and when things happen to me, who am I to claim that God is unfair or that I have the right to be depressed/upset/angry at God because things didn't go my way? God keeps the universe in order and still has the concern to deal personally in my heart and to give me His righteousness through Jesus, wiping my sin away and making me His own. How can I respond with anything but worship and adoration to Him? When things suck in my life (or in your life), when things don't go my way, I am left to agree with Job in saying, "Behold, I am insignificant; what can I reply to [God]? I lay my hand on my mouth." (40:4) I have nothing to say to God but that He is good and great and glorious, not because of what happens to me in my insignifant lifespan or of some mystical spiritual experience that we're supposed to have and what was forced down my throat by people in college claiming to know God in this way, but just because of who He is and what He's done in Jesus' life and death on the cross for His people and how it's all spoon-fed and spelled out to us in Scripture. He knows all. We must confess our sin in trying to know everything that happens to us and understanding it all. We are not God. Job's friends, like all of us, think we have some clever little theological understanding of things that fit nicely into the little box of our 3-pound fallen brains. God will not be mocked by this. We must reject this and understand that God is more important than us. We are not important, but God makes us His own and involves us in His great plans to glorify righteousness because He is gracious and merciful. We must not try and understand every terrible or good thing that happens to us, but reply with Job that, "[God] can do all things, and that no purpose of [His] can be thwarted." (Job 42:2) He has a purpose that is bigger than we can understand and that we could never make happen on our own even if given the chance and the ability because we are a wicked people. I know I am. But God is good.

So that's what happened for New Year's 2007 for me. Just thought I would share that with the 1 or 2 people who might read this.

*references to Job 38-41