One Word Week 3- Tuesday

Invocation
Make the sign of the cross, and say,
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  

Invitation Prayer
“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.”  (Matt. 5:5)  O Lord, I am lowly and humble.  You alone are my inheritance.  Amen.  

Word:  Isaiah 45:7
“I form light and create darkness;

I make well-being and create calamity;

    I am the Lord, who does all these things.”

Meditation
Chaos by Megan Roegner

Chaos is one of those perplexing words that can mean so many things in the English language.  The most common definitions in contemporary English are, according to Merriam-Webster, “a state of utter confusion” and “a confused mass or mixture.” After almost two years of pandemic life, we are all well versed in this kind of chaos, an excess of things that are jumbled and tangled and confused.

Like so many English words, we have inherited chaos from Greek by way of Latin. And it is the Greek version that I first encountered, as a child obsessed with mythology. Ironically, despite its association with excess today, chaos originally meant absence. In the Greek creation myth, chaos is the word used to describe the primordial void before the emergence of Gaia, the earth, and Eros, love personified. Because the Biblical story of Creation was so familiar to me, I did not initially see the similarities between the Greeks’ chaos of emptiness and the way that Genesis describes how in the beginning  “The earth was without form and void” (Genesis 1:2).

I encountered another use of chaos when I learned about chaos theory. Granted, I have an English teacher’s understanding of chaos theory, which is to say that all I know about it comes from reading the Tom Stoppard play Arcadia and googling “chaos theory for dummies.” From what I dimly understand, chaos theory depends upon defining chaos as “the inherent unpredictability in the behavior of a complex natural system” (Merriam-Webster). The classic example of chaos theory is the analogy of how a butterfly flapping its wings can eventually lead to a tornado across the world. Chaos theory does not suggest that things happen without reason. Quite the opposite,  actions are deterministic in nature: everything has a cause and an effect—we just aren’t clever enough to see a pattern. 

Chaos, appropriately, is a paradox. It is too much, it is not enough; it’s a reason for everything, but a reason too frequently unknown. I often think that paradox is the only real way to understand the important things in life, especially the only way our mortal brains can begin to understand God. We’ve already seen in Genesis 1 how God made something out of the nothingness of cosmological chaos. In Isaiah 45, the prophet gives voice to God’s words regarding the chaos of social and political disorder. Isaiah was writing at the end of the Babylonian captivity, a cataclysmic era for God’s people, which lasted close to 70 years. God says,

 “I form light and create darkness;

     I make well-being and create calamity;

    I am the Lord, who does all these things.” (Isaiah 45:7)

An excess of human confusion may seem like the absence of God, but he makes it clear that everything is his design, and his design is one of order and purpose, even if we can’t anticipate the outcome in the present. He’s the butterfly and the tornado; there in the mess, the void, and the beauty.

Father, when we encounter chaos, help us to remember that you are present and you are in control. Help us trust your plans for us. Amen.

Prayer for Family

·        For my immediate family (parents, spouse, siblings).

·        For extended family (cousins, aunts and uncles, grandparents)

·        For close friends that are as family to me. 

·        For those who don’t have families, or whose families are broken.

·        For forgiveness and reconciliation where there is division in my family.

·        For provision where there is need in my family.

·        For God to be the foundation, and the cross the center of my family. 

·        For a generation yet unborn, future members of our family. 

Closing Prayer
O Lord and King, your Kingdom comes even without our prayer.  But we pray that it would also come among us.  We are desperate for your reign and rule, for all we see is rebellion.  Come into my heart, my home, my family, my work, my church, my community.  Rule with justice and with mercy.  Come, Lord Jesus.  Amen.