Making Sense Of It All

So I get a call from Karen at 11 am while I am at work in Ballarat. "Er, honey, are you free to talk?" she asked, although I sensed a keener desperation in her voice. "What's up?" I say, and she tells me that she woke up today to find the house flooded. Water was leaking from the lights in the ensuite and had made its way into the master bedroom and what was even more worrying was that it had somehow made its way downstairs into the dining area.

I tried to suppress the initial instinct to panic, and the images of Titanic-level water gushing into the house that was playing in my head. Instead I switched into problem solving mode and tried to think of who she should call first. I then changed out of my theatre scrubs and told who I needed to that I needed to attend an emergency back home, and thankfully they were very understanding at my workplace.

I get another call from Karen while driving and she tells me that she was worried because water heater at the back of the house was letting out hot air, and I tell her to get away from the backyard to somewhere safe. The house was secondary to her safety and I try my hardest to keep within the speed limits. The Titanic was now exploding in my head, and I could not be there to save my wife.

It was a long hour and twenty minute drive home, and I called frequently to make sure she was okay, while trying to figure out what I could do from all this distance away. Find the main water supply and turn it off. She manages to call the plumber and he tells her to find the main electricity switch and turn that off too.

I felt a little more settled after that, and soon my thoughts naturally drifted to the question we all ask ourselves in times of trouble - "Why me?" and, if you are so inclined, "What is God trying to tell me? Have I displeased Him in some way?"

There were fleeting moments of anger, bargaining and denial all in the short space of my trip home. We are all meaning-making creatures and I was trying to make sense of this 'tragedy' that had blindsided us on an otherwise ordinary Tuesday morning.

Now I use the word 'tragedy' here carefully because, really, compared to everything else that is happening in the world right now (whether reported or unreported), how dare I classify this as a tragedy. But it was a mini-tragedy nonetheless - I was faced with the prospect of homelessness, and potentially months of work on the house. The thought of that still sends shivers down my spine.

By the grace of God, things were worse in my head than I had imagined, which is usually the case. Karen was safe when I got home, and she had dried up most of the house. The water was no longer dripping from the ceilings, and apart from some short-circuited wires and some skirting damage, I would like to believe the house has escaped relatively unscathed.

The insurance company was really understanding and helpful in our times of need, and the tradesmen were friendly and even brought some humour into a serious situation. We found out what the problem was - the original builders of the house must have accidentally driven a nail through a pipe above our bathroom, but instead of taking responsibility and fixing it, they left it alone - it'll be right - and the nail had held out until now.

We are now waiting for the building assessors to come by and see what needs to be fixed, which we are praying won't be major. We still have a roof over our heads, and Karen is safe, and that is the main thing for now.

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So why did it have to happen?

Here is how I have been processing it. This has happened:

1) For absolutely no reason. I think that sometimes we try too hard to justify everything that goes on in the world. We try and make sense of bombs going off and of buildings collapsing and of natural disasters that rob people of their lives and their homes. We are meaning-making creatures, after all, and meaninglessness does not sit well with us - every tragedy should result in goodness, and everything  should happen for a reason.

Try to apply that reasoning to the perpetrators that have never been brought to justice, or to the victims who carry their tragedies unresolved with them for the rest of their lives. Try to apply that to the people who have tried to live healthy but succumb to their cancers anyway, or the occasional smoker who lives well into their eighties.

We do not live in a fixed moral universe. The sun will shine and the rain will fall equally on both the good and the evil people of this world. Yes, we often reap what we sow, but not always, and yes, there is the law, and a judicial system in place, but justice is rarely swift nor adequate in our fallen world.

We live in a broken world, and all we can do is try to bring light into the darkness and life into areas where there is only death, and it heartens me to see some of us trying to do exactly that.

2) God must be punishing me for some sin. Once again, this thinking does not sit well with me for a couple of reasons - firstly, this really depends on your frame of belief - if you were an atheist, then No one is punishing you for anything, if you were a Buddhist, perhaps this is payback for some sin in a past life and so forth.

In my Christian frame of belief - really, God has forgiven all my sins on that cross where Jesus died. Not some of my sins. Not only the sins I committed before I became a Christian. Not only the small sins. All of my sins. Past, present, future, and really, is Christ's death on the cross not big enough to cover any sin? All of my sins.

3) God wants me to learn something from this. Now this perhaps, I can subscribe to. I am not being punished, but I am being refined because God is still interested in who I become and how I interact with the world around me.

I think if there is one thing that God desires from me is my full dependence on Him. That means to humble ourselves completely and depend on Him alone.

What does that even mean? 

I must say that I don't fully comprehend that yet - we are created to work and look after this earth that He has made, and we naturally take pride in what we have accumulated and built with our own hands.

For me it was this house - I remember that a lot of my confidence came from this home we had acquired, the furniture we had painstakingly assembled, this land we owned. It was a source of great pride.

If there is one thing God despises, it is the proud, because it is with this same pride that we pass judgement on other people's lives, it is this pride that shields us from the real problems affecting our communities and the world we live in, this pride that leads to self-centeredness - when we were made to love our God and our neighbours as ourselves. Strangely enough, this pride does not bring satisfaction but discontentment - a need to acquire more to validate our very existence.

And so here I am, humbled once more before God, as He pries my hands a little more from the things that I am desperately trying to hold on to dearly, reminding me to let go a bit more of the things that invest all my confidence in.

I have to let go of my sureness in this house, all my belongings, my beloved wife, my dear family members, my job, my status, my health - all these things that I thought I have control over, or think that I am in control of - it is days like this that remind me that I am in control of absolutely nothing.

And so I come before my Creator once more with fear and trembling, and truthfully, I am still learning what it means to trust Him more, especially in my comfortable middle class existence. I have not known hunger for the longest time, I have been spared from homelessness, my health has had one or two scares in the past but I have my health now.

I am still trying to process this, and writing about it has allowed me to put my thoughts into some cohesive form, although in truth, I am still shaken by the thought of what could have been, especially if neither of us were home to notice it in time.

Letting go of the tangible things that I can put my trust in to put my faith in the unseen is so hard even for a 'veteran' Christian like me. Days like these show up what my foundations are truly made of.

²⁴ “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. ²⁵ The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. ²⁶ But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. ²⁷ The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.” Matthew 7:24-27