Memory is convenient if we are to be truthful. I remember well having to fulfill my science requirement in college. The one solid memory I have from taking this class is the third law of thermodynamics which states (in non-scientific language) that everything moves from a state of order to disorder. I will not try to explain it. But in life, I have found this to be true.
Life seems to be a disordered endeavor in which we spend an inordinate amount of energy attempting order. I also remember well the congregational pledge recited in church during baptism. It begins like this: With God’s help, we will so order our lives after the example of Christ. A profound promise made in the light of a disordered life, a life ordered by everything else until everything else reveals its wanting, until darkness gives way to light.
Embedded in the pledge are those two punctuated words often overlooked, we will, which those who live in the light of clarity understand, otherwise not the one who chooses to pursue certainty. This is not a promise that says we will when we get around to it or I will do it sometimes. Will is a promise best said if the consequence of the doing is clear and best left unsaid if spoken in some perfunctory manner, a whistling in the wind of eternity.
Distinguishing between clarity, the thing we see and then do, and certainty, the thing we want and want to order, faith embraces the willing, even the waking, and waits patiently for the resistant and reticent one who avoids the inklings of conscience telling him what to do and does not do it. George MacDonald writes, “Because you will not do, you shall not see; but it would be worse for you if you did see, not being of the disposition to do.”
God does not wait until we are capable. He helps those who are willing, and willing is fraught with consequence, with failing, with ineptness, but also with fruit. The promise of we will is a response to what God has done for us. And what will we do, can we do, but so order our lives after the example of Christ with God’s help? God’s so-ordering is the task left when those earthly orderings expose indifference. God cannot be indifferent. Love could never be.
This is like the man who goes on a walk following a trail he has heard is a challenging walk worth taking for the view at trail’s end. He trades glances between firm footing with looking forward, seeing only the foliage before him. The promised view described to him is clear, the path uncertain. The trail, full of switchbacks and brambles, narrows and widens, flattens and climbs, firms and softens. He walks on. The view awaits his arrival.
We do not know what we will become, for this is God’s province. But we hold close the hope promised by the view, clear in our sight. By seeing, we will. By seeing, so do.