Finding Order in the Chaos

Ron Phillips

M. C. Escher was a Dutch graphic artist, known for some of the most interesting art of the 20th century. Two of his works, Relativity and Waterfall, are classic examples of his work, which combined art, architecture, and optical illusion. He once said that…

 “We adore chaos because we love to produce order.”

Sounds a lot like man’s relationship to God.

Our world --- devoid of God --- is chaos. At Adam’s Fall, the world was plunged into disarray. Yet, each time one of us makes the decision to leave the chaos of death for life in Him, He takes what was confusion and disorder, and turns it into a beautiful paradox… a life that was seemingly going nowhere that now has eternity as its open road.

Not sure which way is up? Just reach out your hand to Jesus. As imperfect and chaotic as your life may be, He still adores YOU!

God Restores Order to Our Lives

Mel Lawrenz in “Everything New”: God Restores Order to Our Lives

I’ve been giving Mel Lawrenz’s most recent Everything New devotional some thought this week. In “Putting the Pieces Back Together,” Mel provides a powerful description of the order with which God originally imbued Creation—and the subsequent loss it suffered as a result of the Fall.

Eden was a place of perfect harmony. But as soon as we—in the persons of Adam and Eve—took our lives into our own hands, that harmony was disrupted and we were plunged into a new reality of brokenness:

Life would be easier, wouldn’t it, if all its pieces held together. If they always made sense. If nothing ever broke off. If no part were ever lost, or twisted, or detached….

Imagine life in Paradise. Eden was the wonderful opening chord of life, complete harmony with nothing in excess, nothing missing, nothing broken. But when that break did happen (and what an awful shattering sound it made), when human beings said, “we think we can do this on our own,” all creation shuddered and cracks spread throughout.

Our only hope from then on was that someone, somewhere would help us put the pieces back together.

From The Eyes of God

Written by Rev. Daniel Forster

Are you feeling overwhelmed by guilt? Let’s work through it together.

“When they came, he looked on Eliab and thought, ‘Surely the Lord’s anointed is before him.”  But the Lord said to Samuel, ‘Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.’” (1 Samuel 16:6-7, ESV)

Have you heard the saying “perception is reality”? I used to believe that but praise God, He has taught me otherwise. All throughout the Bible we are taught that God does not see the same way that we do.

In 1 Samuel, the king Saul has lost the favor and spirit of the Lord our God because of his disobedience and his lack of repentance in his heart. God instructs Samuel the prophet to go to Bethlehem and seek a son of Jesse there. Samuel does not know his name. He has all of Jesse’s sons brought before him as the Lord directs him in which God will anoint as King of Israel. Today’s passage picks up the story when Samuel is looking on the sons of Jesse.