Aren’t there rules about things like this? Feelings like this and thoughts like these? Isn’t there a handbook full of cute anecdotes and catchy phrases and practical how-tos for situations like this? Isn’t there an old wives tale or some soothing salve to make occasions like these somehow a little more bearable, a lot more resolving? And if there isn’t, well then why not? Hasn’t this book been written a hundred times before and hasn’t history repeated itself well enough to leave well enough alone and only pick on the big guys? Or at least someone its own size? Why does it choose to remake and reinvent history with a new batch of unsuspecting prey every few years? Why us and why now?
There aren’t answers and there won’t be, I guess. Trial and error and hindsight and by accidents and mistakes and completion are all part of our lots in this journey. The moment one figures it all out is the moment another one is embarking on that same journey, apt to walk the same path and make the same mistakes.
The only thing that hasn’t changed isn’t a thing at all, but a God who delights in doing new things, looking to old paths, leading with little children and confounding those same children with the crowns of grey hair and ancient wisdom encircling them. He is a God of paradox and promise, sufficiency and surprise. He is a God worth our meager praise and our empty hands. And He is a God who takes our ‘I don’t knows’ and our ‘But waits’ and shushes them with a finger in the right direction.
