Events

The world is increasingly aware of everything that is happening across the community.  Between 24-hour news channels, information and overload on the web, and gossip and information sharing through an increasingly available number of vehicles, it is overwhelming!  Everything is fodder for everyone.  You cannot walk, talk, and even reflect without at least one new bit of information.  Unless one intentionally doesn’t listen, one finds oneself hearing, analyzing, and wondering.
 
What do the good, even great events mean?  How does or should one deal with the bad news?  Is this something I am supposed to learn and grow from, or is it simply life playing out a hand?  Is God in the midst of the story or is it simply karma finding its home? 
 
There are stories, current and historical, where God explicitly decides to act.  Sometimes they are not obvious, even when we have the details.  One understands that God is compelled to take action, but is it in every event.  When I read how “the Angel of God arrived and struck the Assyrian camp—185,000 Assyrians died.  By the time the sun came up, they were all dead—an army of corpses!  Sennacherib, king of Assyria, got out of there fast, back home to Nineveh.  As he was worshiping in the sanctuary of his god Nisroch, he was murdered by his sons Adrammelech and Sharezer.  They escaped to the land of Ararat.  His son Esar-haddon became the next king.”  (Isaiah 37.36-38)  I cannot deny the impact, yet I still wonder if I would have recognized Divinity’s hand at the time.
 
Do I see God at work now?  Am I even trying to see, hear, or feel?  Will I let the unknown become the known?
 
We have an incredible opportunity, each in their space and moment.  Divinity is at work, in ways known and hidden.  Divinity is engaged in your life and mine, even if we are marching alone.  Divinity is reaching into your life and mine through beauty and pain, awesome moments, difficult challenges, and through interaction with others.  God is with us, always.