Order

I walked down a sidewalk and saw 2 things:

On the right: A well maintained, mowed, and landscaped strip of grass and trees. My sidewalk was one border. The street was the other.

On the left: Miles of chaotic nature. My sidewalk as one border and the blue sky the other.

Which side was more orderly? The well maintained grass with evenly spaced trees? Or the as-it-lies nature?

When man makes order, we expect the right side of the road. When God makes order, He expects the left.

When man comes up with orderly theology to define God, he comes up with the right side of the sidewalk. Every tree neatly spaced. Every aspect, outlined appropriately. When God comes up with theology of how to define Himself, He expects the left side. It is what it is. He is what He is.

The order isn't found in how we place the trees. It's found in the DNA of the trees themselves. You have to get to the fundamentals of what makes nature, in any way predictable. Nature is orderly only in that DNA is orderly. Understanding God isn't about understanding landscaping. It's not about placing the puzzle pieces. God is only orderly because his DNA is orderly. But He isn't landscaped. He won't always fit the patterns we've made for Him. He will be what He is.

And even when we put Him in our neatly spaced doctrines, still the only thing that's orderly is His DNA.... His heart. Our landscaping is nothing. Our puzzle mapping is nothing. God is as wild as nature and as orderly as nature.

God is more similar to the left side of the road and if we could, perhaps, begin viewing Him like that, we would stop throwing out cheap answer's to messy questions. Perhaps we would have to dig deeper into the motivations of God's heart before we claimed to understand anything. And perhaps, God's answer would meet the complicated requirements of our difficult questions... because that's who He is.