That Sinking Feeling

Every once in a while you hear stuff in the news that is almost unthinkable. Earlier this month the ground opened up underneath the bedroom of thirty seven year old Jeff Bush while he slept in his bed in his home in Seffner, Florida. Just like that, Jeff was gone. Rescue workers were not even able to recover his body!

It was only days later when forty three year old Mark Mihal was playing golf with his three buddies at the Annbriar Golf Course in Illinois. They turned around and Mark was gone! Fortunately, his friends who could hear his moaning were able to pull Mark out of the eighteen foot deep sink hole that had suddenly swallowed him alive. He suffered a dislocated shoulder from the ordeal but testified later what it felt like to be falling and not knowing how far down he was going to go and then the feeling as the dirt began falling down over him. 

It’s hard to imagine anything much more terrifying really isn’t it. For sure, these are unusual events, (though sinkholes are apparently much more common than we might expect … in 2012, a 15-year-old girl died when her family's car fell into a sinkhole in Utah) but they do give credence to that old saying (maybe even one of the oldest) – “You just never know!”

It’s more than a saying though. It’s an axiom of life. And even more than that, it is Scripture.

“13 Now listen, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.’ 14 Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. 15 Instead, you ought to say, ‘If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.’”  James 4:13-15

Now, it is interesting that believers and unbelievers alike share completely in the reality that our lives could turn or end at any point. We both know it full well. The expression ‘You just never know’ is absolutely universal. However, there IS a distinct difference isn’t there. Notice how in the passage we are exhorted to say, “If the Lord wills…”. And that’s the difference right there isn’t it. Those of us who trust Christ have the assurance we belong to Him and as His own, our futures are in His hands. We need to learn to trust and obey. But those without this faith are compelled to believe in fate instead – impersonal, blind chance. As such they must resign themselves to a hopeless sense of despair. The late great thinker Francis Schaeffer referred to such unfortunate souls as ‘cosmic orphans’. Better to have a heavenly Father I think.

25 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27 Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?

28 “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. 29 Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 30 If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? 31 So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32 For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33 But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

Matthew 6:25-34