How to Keep From Falling Apart
Things fall apart…
This is quite possibly the best title of any book ever written. Now, the rest of Chinua Achebe’s novel on social inequality and yams is just so-so in my opinion, but the title has always caught my attention – anytime a glass shatters falling from my cupboard, or it a flock of birds finds my freshly washed car, or I watch a faith community that began so healthy begin to pick each other apart. Things fall apart.
Each time it is painful to watch and it somehow reminds me of the entire Universe. Everything about this present creation is falling apart. The Universe is spinning farther and farther apart, our own sun is a star that is using up a limited amount of fuel and will (if the Lord tarries) burn out. Our own bodies are failing on us the moment we begin using them, free-radicals and other nemeses plotting against us.
So how does one fight the tide of such savage dispersion? With every atom is warring against every other one for survival, how can we seek a future Kingdom of God that remains?
So there is a Sabbath rest still waiting for the people of God. 10 For all who have entered into God’s rest have rested from their labors, just as God did after creating the world. 11 So let us do our best to enter that rest. But if we disobey God, as the people of Israel did, we will fall.
- Heb 4:9-11
Rest does not come naturally in a world where there is a war going on. To keep things from falling apart in your life, your health, your faith community, and more… it takes intentionality.
Nothing comes together outside of intentionality.
We were created by God originally as gardeners, and this vocation provides an interesting view into the idea of intentionality. I’ve been tending a 15×15 garden space in our urban neighborhood. Its engendered in me a fabulous sense that “things fall apart.” Weeds grow, plants droop and need trellises, tools scrape and sculpt the crumbling earth, pests large and small want a piece of my intentionality because they have not invested as I have into growing food.
Some people build the sand castles, others knock them over. The writer of Ecclesiastes knew this well (Eccl 3:3) “There is a time to break down, and a time to build up.” As I’ve stated, the destructive forces of the Universe are always breaking you down, and your job as one of God’s gardeners is to always intentionally be building up.
Put yourself in an environment that spurs you on toward a more spiritually-formed life. If you want to pray, create a space for that prayer to happen, or it never will. If you want to be a peacemaker, put yourself in situations where you have to practice peace. This won’t often “just happen.” And when it does, unless you’ve intentionally prepared, you’ll fail the test – simply because you were not intentional!
Its not hard, but the hardest part is getting started.
In God’s Kingdom, Things Come Together.
Tunesntoons is discussing. 
Tunesntoons 4:00 pm on August 17, 2011 Permalink
Except, sometimes it IS hard. BUT it’s not as hard as you think