Changed my life, again

The world revolves around me.  I am convinced of this.  I have been insisting on this reality for a few weeks now, as I am taken aback by how so many things in my life work together so perfectly and every time do not fail to change my life once more.  I am humbled by this.  I am awed.  I am simply overwhelmed under the thought that Someone loves me.  Loves me enough to notice me.  Enough to hear me.  Enough to work the lives of unrelated people across the globe in such a way that it is unmistakable that all things do in fact work together for my good.  What could be so freeing?  What could be so self-eradicating?  What could so beautiful?  Don't be surprised if I answer the bland question, "How's life?" with a simple, "Good things are happening.  Only good things."  And it is hard to always place proper words to these things.  But I know they are happening.  I know they are good.  And they blow my mind daily.  Here's a recent example:

I began reading Job on Monday.  Before I read, I usually ask God to use his word to affect my mind and life.  To help me see.  To renew my mind, transform my life.  I do not await experiences or signs.  I know this happens every time.  But sometimes it is more visible, more readily apparent, than other times.  As I read the first few chapters, a few things caught my attention and forced me to examine my own life and commitment.  First is Satan's question, "Does Job fear God for nothing?" insinuating that Job obeys God because God has given him a bunch of stuff, and therefore it is convenient and easy to live faithfully.  This hit me pretty hard.  I am a man of doubt and questioning.  That is my natural entropy.  And when I thought if I would remain faithful had everything been stripped away from me, everyone, I wasn't so sure.  I really can't say that I would be able to make it.  I just don't know.  This was rather troubling.  Job was able to counter with a question of his own, "Shall we indeed accept good from God and not accept adversity?"  I have grown so accustomed to getting good things from God, especially recently, that I don't know how long I would last if I got evil instead, especially if it was without cause as in Job's case.  That is really hard.  That really shook me up a bit.

Brooding over this disheartening thought and the ensuing despair, once again revisiting the always-encroaching suspicion that I am after all a fake--I have tricked myself into this; I wanted it so much that I believed something I am not; this won't last--I turned half-heartedly to the other assigned text of the day, 2 Corinthians 1.  I am distraught.  I am defeated.  And then I read:

Blessed be the God and father of our lord Jesus the Messiah, the father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.

Must I say more?

I am breathless.  I am in tears.  Why do you do this?  Why am I so loved?  Why me?  I felt like a baseball bat just cracked my head at 80 mph.  Yes, it hurt.  But a welcome hurt, since my life is changed for the better because of it.

And that's not all, the kicker for me was in a few verses:

Indeed, we had the sentence of death within ourselves so that we would not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead; who delivered us from so great a death, and will deliver us, he on whom we have set our hope.

 Talk about answered prayer.  I bless the people who arranged my reading plan.  Whether consciously or not, but their work has repeatedly helped me in life-changing proportions.

Oh, but wait.  The next day, a good friend tells me about her recent experience with grief and sorrow, a new experience, but one that softens the heart and deepens compassion.  In the course of a week or so, a close friend at work died unexpectedly from a car accident--20 years old--a friend that had recently made a change from rebellion to God things, a friend so close to the heart of this friend of mine, as well as a grandfather, not as close, but the sorrow just as real.  She talked about how grief has been a foreign idea, how she has never really lost anyone close, and how figuring all of this out has highlighted the beauty of understanding and compassionate friends.  

This is what I have in mind when I say the world revolves around me.  I cannot help my friend with this sorrow, but I can listen, I can feel, and I can understand that adversity comes, and especially death, to show us that it is foolish and useless to depend on ourselves.  We are too weak, too small, too ineffectual.  And, also, to help us feel with others in pain and comfort them with the comfort that we have received.  That, for me, life-changing.  That's freeing.  That's exhilarating.  That's my life.