RANDOMNESS

I'm using Nora Holm's The Runner's Bible this month, and today's Statement of Truth is "The Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning." (James 1:17)

I know from my research that "Shadow of turning" calls up an image of a sundial. It refers to time and the passage of time."Variableness" calls up images of the clouds forming, changing, and passing. We see the sun, the moon, the stars, and then we don't. Light comes and goes. But not with God. He doesn't come and go.

He never changes.

And yet He created a physical world full of change.

"God is Spirit" (Jn.4:24) existing in a spiritual milieu, but He created a physical, material world and physical beings who can't put their hands through it, who enjoy hot tea and lemon with sugar and who love to watch the sun "rise." Even on a gray day.

He loves variety, motion, change, beauty, randomness. This God, who created all things, and who never changes, created a universe that never stands still, where every snowflake, every leaf, every person is different, unique in some way.

Even snowflakes that appear identical formed in different places in a cloud, fell in slightly different spots. One will get the sun, the other be in shade moments longer before it melts.One leaf catches sun or rain, is on a plant or a tree that receives more water or less. One gets eaten by an insect or a deer, another is the resting place of a butterfly, or ends up pressed in a child's scrapbook to be gazed upon many years later.

No two creatures--created by God--ever experience life or existence in the same exact way. Ever.

Think about it.

Is any "random" event truly random?

A bug flits randomly from my lamp. Not "randomly" to the bug. It has some "idea" in its pea-brain--to get away from the heat or light or enemy, to seek food or a mate elsewhere. It has eyes. It sees a place that might be good to rest in or on or under.

Samuel Johnson said, "Nothing in reality is governed by chance, but that the universe is under the perpetual superintendence of Him who created it; that our being is in the hands of omnipotent Goodness, by whom what appears casual to us is directed for ends ultimately kind and merciful; and that nothing can finally hurt him who debars not himself from the divine favour."