Oh does it?! - and do they?! . . . Hmmm.

When packing the car trunk for a trip, one of the most difficult tasks is fitting everything in. And then, to be sure, space must be found for each member of the family, for no one can be left behind.

My parents were market-gardeners and provided for their family by efficiently making use of every square inch of a 3 and a half acre property. The soil was sandy-loam and lush vegetables were grown each season and 90% of them were taken to farmers’ markets for direct-customer sale. But the big task was to ‘load the truck’ prior to each market. Again, efficiency was in order and every inch and all aspects of footage were carefully considered and utilized. When ‘packed,’ the truck had no room for anything else. Dad took pride on how he responded to using the space that was not only allowed but demanded.

Into our lives come all manner of events and all kinds of people. Providence suggests that everything and everyone coming our way does so for God’s purposes – in what God directs and in what God allows.

I have all kinds of problems with that thinking, as no doubt do you. I immediately go to – ‘Yes, but what about . . ?!’ thinking of the accidents, tragedies and not so savoury events – and people that descend upon us, unasked and often very much unwelcome.

And yet, and yet . . . Unless life is entirely random, happenstance, meaningless, pointless, then there must be aspects of allowance and direction, and attending meaning, that come our way unannounced and unsolicited. And is it that far to suggest that it all comes from the hand of God (again, as directed or at least allowed) and that in a way that does not make God the Author of the calamity but One who can weave it into our Story – even the dark elements and strands of an otherwise colourful, beautiful tapestry, including them even in such ways as to provide contrast and even (eventually) richness, perspective and Joy.

Our Lord, says the writer of the NT Book of Hebrews, ‘for the joy that was set before Him, endured the Cross, despising the shame . . .’  Hmmm.

I saw the title and blurb of a book in an airport, once (sorry, I forget the name), in which each chapter took the story of a well-known, still-living (so you could ask) and prominent personality whose testimony it was that the very thing – the hardest thing, that they’d had to endure had been the making of them. They didn’t know why or how it had come to them, but the experience had shaped them in positive, strengthening, even life-growing ways.

Of course, it’s not true that ‘everything fits’ for some things in life are not ‘fitting’ and there is much that we must sift through, sort out and discard – like rotten apples in an otherwise healthy, fulsome basket. So we wrestle with the concept, both of providence and also of the whats and the whys of life, God being present but not stopping or changing, removing or alleviating – least not every time, pray as you will.

But I do think that everyone belongs and that each person who comes into our day, our life, our experience, is a gift of God, even ‘Jesus in disguise’ (or at least an ‘angel of whom we’re as yet unaware). ‘I minister to them – the poor, the dying, the infants in their helplessness, as if they were Jesus Himself,’ was the attitude and actions expressed by Mother Theresa.

So, we lean into life circumstances, believing that even the crap of life can have (or at least eventually, give) meaning and ultimate purpose in shaping and refining us towards better ends. It could be the very thing we need to help, advance and spur us on to the safety of Home at last.

And we welcome the stranger, the neighbour, the friend and family member – each of whom can be to us the gift of God, the very person we need to help, advance -- and bring us safely Home at last.