Why Do Good Things Always Happen...

"You know what?  I like you, Marcie.  You know why?  Because you make me feel good about myself, and I hope I make you feel good about yourself too!" exclaimed my boisterous physical therapist.  Boisterous is the best word I can use to describe the almost indescribably upbeat - to the point of infectious giddiness - person that she is.  I loves me some quirky people.  The quirkier, the better.  If ever I'm watching a movie with my husband or kids and an odd person is insinuated into the plot, they all look at me and said, "Mom, you like him/her, don't you?"

Harmless quirkiness lightens the heavy atmosphere of an often weary world.  Besides, anyone who can cajole me into revisiting these little beauties after a 15+ year break... better be optimistic enough for the both of us.

YES, they are lunges... which is a loose translation for "exquisite agony"...
or maybe they're just named after what you want to do to someone who makes you do them.

Oh, they feel harmless enough when you do twenty or so of them after said 15+ year break.  And that is the silent evil lurking in a lunge... Sure, go ahead.  Show your kids, your ex-P.E. teacher, your new personal trainer how many you can still do.  However,  when you can't walk two steps the next day without your knees buckling in pain... when you suddenly remember how ridiculously out of shape you are... when you decide you'd rather get down on your hands and knees than squat to get clothes out of the dryer for a solid week, when you wish for the sweet relief that being run over by a Mack truck would most certainly bring... you will know the punishment of the lunge.  These are a new part of my physical therapy regimen that a severe ankle and leg fracture and resulting surgery secured for me.  After 6 weeks of calling a wheelchair "my ride" long before I ever thought I would, I get the pleasure of more physical therapy.  After all, they had almost discharged me from my last bout of therapy resulting from a back injury when I decided I was all better and then broke my leg to prove it.  I recall with amusement the day I called one of the therapists from my hospital bed to tell him I'd have to cancel my last week of therapy on account of my broken leg, but assured him I'd be back - not to worry.  He was completely incredulous.  I had gotten over my own incredulity while lying on the ground saying, "This is SO stupid!" and begging my son not to call my husband (who was absent when I hurt myself).  I've often felt I might as well move in to the local physical therapy unit.  They'll miss me when I'm gone... if I'm ever gone.

"Why do bad things always happen?" I've heard so many people wonder - especially lately.  Drought, famine, disease, murder, and the list goes on and on... After all, we all - whether we'll admit it or not - whether we're religious or superstitious or not - know we were put here at the behest of someone who knows more than we do.  We'd have to be utterly ignorant or just plain stubborn to look at the complexity of our bodies (not to mention the micro and macro universe) and think it all happened by accident.  As a wise man once said, "If I saw a working wristwatch wash up on shore of a beach, would I assume it had just evolved into being?  That all its parts had been shaped and come together by random chance?"  I read a post on facebook a few days ago in which the poster exclaimed that people who murder others don't lack morality or religion - they lack empathy - and nothing more.  Insinuating that morality and religion aren't necessary to kindness.  I know some irreligious people who are very kind people.  Is it wrong to say that if I didn't believe in God, I don't think I'd be kind at all?  Why should I be?   I find it amusing that "survival of the fittest" would make any room for empathy... or any positive emotion, for that matter.  After all, how does feeling empathy for another person - putting myself in his or her shoes - ensure that the biologically "fittest" of the species survives?  Empathy would most certainly be a deterrent to biological evolution.  The more compassion one has, the less likely he or she is to survive.  How could empathy or compassion be considered virtuous - as if there is such a thing as virtue - in a dog-eat-dog world?

You know I believe in God.  So now I'll talk about that.  Theologians have debated for millenia about whether or not God provided for the fact that Satan would tempt man to sin, man would sin and become subject to death, and whether or not that was part of God's original plan.  The Bible makes it plain that God does not sin or tempt anyone to sin.  (James 1:13) It is clear, however, that if He is sovereign (in control of His creation), then he must know and have dominion over the course of it... including the wrong that happens.  He "allows" the bad.  WHY?  Is the eternal question.  Well, when man chose to sin... thereby causing sin and death to permeate what had once been a perfect world, why did God allow it?  I have a humble theory that rolls around in my head.  

We are primarily spiritual beings.  All that we think, all that we are... lives inside a physical shell that acts out of what is inside of us and experiences the results of what is in the spirits of those around us.  Why are we physical at all?  I assert that our physical existence serves only for us to understand spiritual truths.  I submit to you broccoli and lunges.  Broccoli - green and good for the health but not so tasty as let's say...  Doughnuts - fried and good for the cardiologist's paycheck but taste like angels dancing on my tastebuds.  Lunges - physically active and good for the health but make "misery" sound like good times.  Lying on the couch - not physically active, not good for the health but is, on the bright side, not lunges.  I hold these truths to be self-evident:  The physical universe reveals to us that what is fun and easy is diametrically opposed to what is good for us deep down - despite what the advertisers of the Ab Lounger would have us believe.  Conversely, it also tells us that what isn't as fun to eat (I can hear all you, "I like broccoli more than doughnuts," goody-two-shoes right now.  Your mom's not listening.) and what requires more physical exertion is always of more benefit to our overall well-being.

A beautiful princess is born into a glorious kingdom.  Her family welcomes her with open arms, and she is doted upon since birth.  Given everything she could need for positive development and prosperity, she lacks no good thing.  Then one day, a prince rides in on a white stallion, and he says to her, "I will rescue you from your present circumstances!"  She laughs and says, "Rescue me?!  What in the world do I need rescued from?  I have it all."  She does not need his love.  A lover cannot prove his love to a person who has never known that hate was possible.  Even more, he cannot prove his love to his beloved without making a grand sacrifice of his own.  He can say he loves her all he likes, but unless he has to give up a tangible part of himself in sacrifice to her, his words are meaningless and fall to the ground.

A beautiful couple is "born" into a perfect garden in a flawless universe.  They are wanted and welcomed by a loving Father.  They are given dominion.  Their every need is met, and virtually nothing is withheld from them.  They are loved perfectly, and yet they've never been without love.  They eat when they want to eat, but they have never known what it is not to be satisfied.  They enjoy perfect health, but they have never known what it is to be ill.  God says, "I love you."  And they think, "Yes, we know."  After all, He always says that, and love - like perfection - is in endless supply in this garden.  They say, without sacrifice, "We love you too."  

Somehow, I don't appreciate air conditioning in the winter.  If I haven't experienced oppressive heat, I don't value cool refreshment. I don't appreciate my furnace in the summer.  If I haven't experienced freezing cold, I have little use for the warmth a furnace offers me.  Had men not been taken in by Satan's lies (as we often still are), Adams and Eves would never have experienced anger, bitterness, hatred, lies, betrayal, slander, gossip, envy, pride, jealousy, adultery, sickness, greed, rage, murder, etc.   Nor would we have appreciated truth, forgiveness, friendship, happiness, courage, loyalty, charity, humility, health, love, and life.

Did we have a choice?  Yes, and we made the wrong one.  Was God wringing his hands wondering what Plan B was going to be?  No.  Jesus was always part of His plan - to send Himself - in the form of a man - to prove that when He said, "I love you," to us - he meant it at the expense of His own life.  What is written on the hearts of humanity is that it takes the sacrifice of one's very life (not necessarily in death but unto it) to prove the depth of love that one has for another.

I don't know about you, but I know how rotten humanity is - myself foremost.  I am not good.  Neither are you.  "Why do bad things always happen?" we may ask, but a better question might be, "Why do good things always happen?"  In a world filled with people who all want our own way, why and how do good things ever happen?  

In Colossians 1, the Bible says of Jesus, "

15He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. 16For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him. 17He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together."

It says plainly that God is responsible for the holding together of earth.  A world where the presence of God was taken away would be dark, wholly evil, and wholly depraved.  Devoid of any good thing, not just where the possibility of bad things happening would be a likely prospect but a certainty... where a single good thing would never happen.  That would be what I deserve.  When I look around, however, I see goodness.  I see the best that humanity is capable of - far more often than I see the worst.  God has not yet abandoned us.  His presence is with us in the actions of His people and the Spirit He has left us as a counselor.

We live in a world of, "I deserve..."  We all think that it is somehow virtuous to believe that we are good people who deserve good things - the best the world has to offer even.  Truth tells us a different story.  We are not good people capable of doing something bad from time to time.  We are basically bad people incapable of making a decision to do good without some deep-down selfish motive (ie. to make me feel good about me).  God isn't an add-on to the basic "good me" package.  For me He is essential - the only One Who makes it possible for me to genuinely love and be kind... to give and be unselfish.  When I walk around as if He doesn't matter, my life shows forth in selfishness, negativity, unkindness, pride, and more.

I think I mean this to be an encouragement... on those bad days - when it seems we are overhwhelmed and disgusted by the fact that evil and pain seem to be overtaking the whole world, we can be glad that it is a temporary necessity that will end in the ultimate proof of the love for which we so long.  We can acknowledge that it is not without ultimate purpose, and we need not act like victims.  We can remember that - without the bad, we would not even recognize, much less appreciate or treasure, the good.  We can rest in the fact we are eternal spiritual beings spending a very short sojourn in a sometimes dark and often weary place.  We can rejoice that we are able - in Christ - to be a part of the goodness with which God blesses others.  We can choose to walk in the truth.