Mostly, I experience the world as making sense. The circumstances of life are complicated and they are often heartbreaking. But they can be understood, explained, boiled down to inputs and outputs. But every now and again, things happen that just don’t quite make sense to me. A grave prognosis that turns out fine, a change of heart in the most unlikely person, a windfall that arrives just in the nick of time. It’s not often, mind you. But in my experience sometimes the arithmetic of life doesn’t add up and I begin to wonder if God’s providence is at work.
The trees will yield their fruit and the ground will yield its crops; the people will be secure in their land. They will know that I am the Lord, when I break the bars of their yoke and rescue them from the hands of those who enslaved them. – Ezekiel 34:27 (NIV)
This is tricky stuff to discern, and I fully own that I have no special insight into what is divine intervention and what is sheer luck. I’m no prophet. But luckily, Ezekiel is a prophet! Ezekiel gives one way to help know when God’s actions stand behind an unexpected outcome: when people are set free from those things binding them to a less-than-alive way of living.
When will we know that God is moving and acting in the world? When freedom sweeps away enslavement, when yokes of oppression are broken and people are thriving all around. God-given freedom comes in so many forms: compulsive drinking left behind so families can heal, medical debts forgiven so the poor can thrive, the bodies of women and LGBTQ people protected from control by the state.
If you’re looking for God, look for those being set free. God may be among them.
Prayer
God, help us seek your will, and do it.
About the Author
Rev. John Edgerton is Senior Minister and CEO of Old South Church in Boston. He is the 21st Senior minister in the congregation’s over 350 year history.