Lent 26

I try not to believe in interventionist theology, or the idea that God personally intervenes in the  day-to-day lives of individual people, changing them for the better or worse.  It starts off fairly innocently, like people praying that their team will win the big game, or people viewing that a free parking space near the door on a Saturday afternoon at the mall is a divine gift.  But can be easily extended to things like people praying that their country wins a bloody war.  Of course, it gets even more complicated if both sides are praying for victory; which side does God choose?  Are both sides going to be locked in an eternal stalemate because they both prayed to God?  And what happens to the football team (or country) that loses or when you don't get the really good parking spot?  Does that mean that God is angry with you or you did something wrong?

No, I'm much more content with seeing the day-to-day workings of humanity as either products of chance (like the parking lot scenario) or products of our individual/collective actions (like the sporting event or war example).  When God directly intervenes in our life, big things happen.  The last time God intervened, for example, God wound up dead on a cross outside Jerusalem and the entire world was turned upside down.  

This is not to say that I'm a deist.  On the contrary, I'm a theist through and through.  I believe deeply in a God that cares about all of us and is in relationship with all of us.  I just don't believe that relationship is akin to a puppeteer controlling a bunch of puppets on a string in some cosmic puppet show. This is also not to say that we shouldn't be grateful to God in our victories (or for that matter, that we shouldn't feel bad about cursing God in our losses), even if they are small and random things.  Today, I had such a random thing happen to me.

These next few days are going to be a little bit stressful.  I have a midterm for Church History on tuesday evening that I just don't feel ready for.  And on top of that, I had a worship analysis paper for Intro to Corporate Worship (no, we don't learn how to worship Wal-Mart or Costco) due tomorrow at midnight.  But then, out of the blue, one of my classmates in Church History sent everyone an email this afternoon with an online set of the flashcards he had made to aid our studying.  He absolutely didn't have to do that and by doing so, I'm sure he has earned a ton of extra brownie points from everyone in the class (or myself at the very least).  And then, our worship professor sent us an email saying that because she was late on getting us all our last worship analysis papers with grades and comments, she's giving us all an extension until Wednesday.  This lets me focus on Church history for the next few days, and then I can bang out the worship analysis paper after that.  If those sudden gifts of study resources and extra time aren't worth thanking God over, than I don't know what is.

Today, I saw God in two completely random sanity-saving gifts.