My son recently read a book of Urban Legends - many of which I remembered with a fond mixture of horror and fascination from my own adolescence. (My personal favorite is the caller on the upstairs phone.) Many of them have to do with close calls - the narrowly averted meeting with the serial killer, the ax murderer we nearly invited home.
We all love stories about close calls - the person who did not get on the Titanic, or who missed her flight on September 11. Most of us probably have a story or two from our own lives about a near disaster, a barely averted calamity which leave us thanking God, or our lucky stars, depending upon our understanding of the universe, and perhaps dealing with the curiously named "survivor guilt."
I wonder often how many close calls we have every day and never realize? Once in a great while God gives us a glimpse of how He has protected us, how His angels have lifted us up so we did not dash our feet upon the stones, but most often we don't know about the near misses in our lives, the deadly pestilence that did not come nigh our tents.
We do often discuss how "it could have been much worse;"
"Thank God this happened right after we left home and not in the middle of our trip."
"Just think if this had happened in the middle of the night."
"I can't believe he had the exact part we needed!"
"If I had not chosen to take this particular route today . . . "
These are all variations on the theme of the bullet we dodged and we find them fascinating and comforting.
We may wonder too, about potential calamities. Does it have eternal significance whether I take Rt 120 or 12A to get to Lebanon today? Is there, perhaps, a drunk driver or a log truck with failing brakes on one or the other? Or, on a different scale, is my daughter more likely to get AIDS working in a third world orphanage than she is to be in a fatal car crash on her way to college in Boston? (If you know Boston drivers you know how the odds stand.) I can go on this way ad nauseum, but eventually I have to conclude with Kip Dynamite, " Like anyone could even know that."
What can anyone know? Much of what we know about "how things work" is revealed in the book of Job. I am amazed when I consider that it is perhaps the earliest book of the Scriptures written - because what God showed us when He lifted the curtain on the heavenly backstage is huge - events are not random, even though they may not follow our notions of cause and effect. There are purposes we know nothing of; we only have some of the pieces of the puzzle; we are actually on display here on earth and it matters greatly how we live our lives.
In the book of Job God lets us see that events here on earth may well be part of a much larger story; that the calamities or blessings which come into our lives are entirely under the control of God, and He may choose to use our lives here on earth as proving grounds or even real life lessons for other conscious beings. He shows us that the calamities that we meet or avoid may not have anything to do with the goodness or rightness of our choices, but rather with His unknowable purposes. He teaches us that our responsibility is chiefly to humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God, trusting that He will lift us up in His time.
So what does this have to do with close calls and fortuitous choices? How does it help us make sense of events which may seem both random and weirdly preordained? It reminds us that love and fidelity to God are our first duty, combined with unswerving trust in His ways. It cautions us that we see only part of the picture, so it may not make sense to us. It comforts us with the knowledge that we do not need to agonize over what might have been if only we had made different choices or booked different flights. It reassures us that in a paradoxical way our responses to life matter greatly - they are on cosmic display, even though our obedience or disobedience may not gain its reward this side of the grave.
"Why" is a question God seldom answers, except in an ultimate sense. We will probably never know why one bridge washed out and another held. We will probably never understand why one child died in the car crash while another survived. We may never know which celestial beings are watching us as we wrestle with heartache and loss, and decide whether to rail against God or trust Him. We may never even understand how He receives any glory from our responses. But the book of Job assures us that He does.
Arthur Ashe, the tennis great who died of AIDS contracted through a blood transfusion made peace with the seemingly capricious nature of God's will when it is viewed through a purely earthly lens. Ashe, was a kind, noble humanitarian; certainly not a man who deserved to have his life cut short. R eflecting on his diagnosis he wrote, "If I were to say 'God, why me?' about the bad things, then I should have said 'God, why me?' about the good things that happened in my life." Both are past finding out under the sun.
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