Saturday 5 March 2016

Seven Stones - Stuff Happens (all the time)

Tinker, alone within a storm,
And losing hope he clears the leaves beneath a tree,
Seven stones
Lay on the ground.
Within the seventh house a friend was found.
And the changes of no consequence will pick up the reins from nowhere.

Here's a thing. Lots of stuff happens all the time. A tinker gets a coincidence between the stones on the ground and the householder who gives a space in the house/garage/shed. A sign from above? Or just one of the things that happen all the time?
Well a traditional analysis would conclude: one or the other. Either God is sending a message or we live in a complex world - one where so many things happen all the time that coincidences are nearly inevitable.

The important thing about the tinker is not the number 7 - it's than he kept banging on doors. The captain turns the boat in peril to follow a gull which appears to be a supernatural sign. But will the gull lead him into peaceful weather? Or onto the rocks?

But if you drive the theology to its end, in a weird way they're both true. Yes, the logic of this world means that coincidences happen all the time - for every tinker who gets their sign that they will get shelter, there's a farmer who sows at the wrong time.

But underneath the coincidences, "God"-incidences and downright chance of this world, there's a deeper logic - derived from the Logos - where nothing is meaningless; nothing is an accident; no sparrow drops to the street unseen.
Enjoy your days in this meaningless life where yet everything is held in the hands of the Ancient of Days.


And feel free to ascribe meaning to the unexpected significance of some of the things you see and experience. Some of them will be statistically more likely than you might think. But all of them will have happened according to the Logos that first designed the world. So tread lightly on your coincidences. They may happen all the time. But they are all worth something.

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