Things Fall Apart

Only you bring chaos to your life, but only God can bring you peace.

There is no rest for the wicked…but those who are godly will rest in peace… (Isaiah 57:21, 2)

One of the best book titles in English literature is Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe.  The title points to a very basic characteristic of Creation in its fallen state – that all the earth is on a self-destructive trajectory; that everything falls apart sooner or later.

Yet we long for things to stay together.  We know something is wrong with this earth – and we fight to keep things together with all we’ve got – we exercise more, we remember not to run with scissors, we pray to any god we can get our hands on (whether its a trinket we picked up in Bali, or the latest diet book) we devise all sorts of strategies to “keep things together.”

Hank Williams Jr. said it best, “No matter how we struggle and strive, we’ll never get out of this world alive…”

Life can be like a sinking sand pit or a spider web – the more you struggle, the more you are trapped in its clutches…

But regardless of our attempts to survive, it inevitably ends in the great release of death…the final exhale of your life.

Maybe there is another way to address this life – as things fall apart – as the kingdom of this world crumbles in around you; lean into it. Find acceptance in your decaying body, in this decaying world, and use it as fuel to reside in the peace of God – the very one who created this world as it should be – a place of sustainability, wholeness, togetherness. When things stick together between you and God, they begin to stick together in life as well.  I’m not saying you won’t experience the loss and death so common in our world today – but you will have the perspective of togetherness mentioned in Isaiah 57 and again by Paul in Romans 8:28 “For God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God…”

Take a closer look – he’s not saying that everything will work together, that the fabric of Creation will cease its unraveling, Paul instead is saying that under the right approach to reality, whether you experience it or not in the moment, God is about the business of weaving things right again – about putting things back together.

This works out on a personal level, for sure, but it also begins to fit in on an interpersonal level, (imagine each broken relationship made right again) on a tribal and national level, (imagine the US and the Taliban laying down their weapons) on a global/environmental level (the lion will lay down with the lamb… the smokestacks will play nice with the atmosphere…)

We call this the “shalom” of God; the salvation of God – the “sticking together” of a good Creation – the one God intended in the first place.

57:20 “But those who still reject me are like the restless sea,

which is never still

but continually churns up mud and dirt.

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