God Does Not Waste Anything

 I have in recent years come to put into words a truth that I knew for many years before this from my own experience. That is, “God does not waste anything.” What I mean by this is that in our own evaluations of our actions, thoughts, experiences and cultural upbringing we tend to make harsh distinctions between what is good or bad, worth remembering and treasuring and that which we want to leave behind and forget. And we tend to also assume that God views our lives and our actions in the same way. Yet this is not so.

The Almighty God perceives the totality of our lives, as individuals and together in local communities, within nations, and in the broad outworking of historical events. God is “no respecter of persons” (Romans 2:11)—seeing and judging us as we are and within the time-space historical time that God set us into. Whatever or whoever shaped or formed our view of what is real, true and beautiful is known by the Holy Spirit, and he can and does utilize that for our good—even when that has been perverse or twisted by our parents or peers or forebearers of the culture we grow up in.

Perhaps we can go with this idea, so long as it is whatever or whoever is good, or tending toward what is good, that God can and does utilize to lead us into knowledge of Jesus Christ and God the Father. That is the easy and simple answer. Yet, this is only half the truth!

Is not God involved in every aspect of our lives—is it not true that there is nothing hid from God and that God is present everywhere, and in each situation, and for everyone? Well, yes, we would have to acknowledge this, when pressed. Yet, in our minds and acts we often demonstrate that we do not actually believe this.

In some of the Psalms we find an attitude of what I will call “practical atheism”:

“Fools say in their hearts, ‘There is no God.’

They are corrupt; they do abominable deed;

there is no one who does good.”

(Psalm 14:1, NRSV)


“They [the wicked] pour out their arrogant words;

all the evildoers boast.

They crush your people, O LORD, and afflict your heritage.

They kill the widow and the stranger;

they murder the orphan, and they say,

‘The LORD does not see;

the God of Jacob does not perceive.’”

(Psalm 94:4-7, NRSV)

 

These are strange words for a person to utter about God. Yet, even though these exact words or phrases may not come from such persons’ mouths, this is what their heart attitude demonstrates. There is no God who knows, sees or will intervene to stop them from doing what they want or desire. No one will hold them to account. Even this supposed “God of Jacob” is merely a myth that weak people cling to.

The truth is that God is there, and God is speaking to everyone. And it is good news indeed that God will be Judge for all people. No one will, in the end of all things, “get away with it.”

The variable dynamic in our lives, and in all human social interactions, is whether or not individuals, and groups of people, are open to listen to what God has to speak. When our hearts are closed off from God’s Presence in the world, and especially to us in our conscious awareness, then we conveniently take on the mindset of the atheist.

Yet God does not waste anything that we do, or choose to do, or any attitude we have learned was normal. For God sees with total clarity, and the Holy Spirit masterfully utilizes all the created abilities and capacities, along with all of the learned habits and chosen notions we carry to navigate in this earthly life in order to draw us to entrust ourselves to Christ, the Risen One. This is why those of us who have chosen to take the path toward healing in Christ have always been led into a process of self-discovery. For the Spirit wants us to come to see ourselves as we are, as we have become (through inherited ways and in those we have consciously taken on), and then to have the eyes of our minds enlighten to perceive what God will do to re-make us. Then, once we get a taste of the all-exceeding goodness of God then we will want to embrace the love of God the Father given us in Christ, through intimate communion with the Holy Spirit.

God does not waste anything we do or choose, or what happened to us. All of our life experiences become valuable because of God’s capacity to bring beauty out of the ashes of our self-destruction or the severity of abuse from others. The invitation of the Holy Spirit is always to let go of our pain and our fragile sense of identify which we have cobbled together to survive and cope and succeed in this life. Only in this willing submission and openness of heart can the Holy Spirit do that deep-level healing in our souls that we need.       

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