What do you do when everything’s falling apart, when it feels like my life is crumbling? We’ll say things in those moments like, “I just can’t hold it together,” or, “I feel like I’m coming unglued.” Things that indicate because I’ve known moments like that, not just that I’m in great pain or that I don’t like this, but that there is a wholeness that has somehow been violated. Things are fractured, things are fragmented, things are disintegrating and that’s a very important moment in life. Where do we go with that?
So, think about some area where it feels like that’s going on with you and I want to walk with you through some remarkable thoughts. We’re journeying through this book by Dallas Willard, the Renovation of the Heart. The greatest wisdom from Jesus and history on, how do persons become renewed? How do I get changed? We’re in the second chapter, going to take a look at, what does it mean to be a person?
But first, there’s just a paragraph in there I’d never noticed for years and years and years until quite recently, that’s absolutely brilliant. It’s been very helpful to me. I hope it will be for you, where Dallas basically explains, how do you understand anything? What does it mean to come to understand or penetrate the meaning of something? Here’s what he writes.
“God has created all things in such a way that they are inherently intelligible.” Now, that’s a claim you may agree or disagree with. A lot of people who believe in the meaninglessness of the universe or absurdity or that we’re just a random machine would contradict that. Then, Dallas goes on to say, “How do you understand stuff? What does it mean to understand something? All things have parts, these parts have properties, which in turn make possible relationships between the parts to form larger wholes. Which in turn have properties that make possible relationships between larger wholes, that form still larger wholes and so on. This basic structure of created reality applies to everything. From an atom or a grain of salt, to the solar system or the galaxy, from a thought or a feeling to a whole person or a social unit.”
Now, this is quite extraordinary. So, I wrote a little chart just to help me get this clear in my head and I’ll show it to you. All things are made up of parts. So, for instance, you could take a tire and a tire’s got certain property. It’s round, it’s rubber, it rotates. You can fill it up with air and that enables it to enter into a relationship with something else, like an axle. Then, that can create in relationship with other things, a larger whole, and that would be a car and its property’s quite amazing, it moves. Then, that can join up with other vehicles to create still larger entities like Amazon. What did we ever do before there was Amazon or Lyft and Uber?
Or you could take a single string that’s elastic and it produces a sound. It can enter into relationships with pegs and sound boards and create a violin. Then, that can join up with French horns and tubas and make an orchestra. This is the way that it is with all of creation. Then, the Bible says, when you take everything together that God has created and web it together in harmony and mutual delight, God, people, and creation that’s called Shalom. That’s why we have this ache for things to be whole, because everything was made to be a universe.
Jesus talked about that as the kingdom of God. He said He was bringing that vision, that reality of the wholeness, oneness, harmony of all things through himself, through His life, through His teaching that said about the revolution that we’re all still a part of. That is our vision for our life. Another Dallas quote that I dearly, dearly love from a book called, The Divine Conspiracy. When you wonder, where you headed, what’s your destiny? He said, “We should picture our destiny as being part of a tremendously creative team effort, under unimaginably splendid leadership, that would be Jesus, on an inconceivably vast scale. Wish you had more to do, bigger than your city, your state, your country, the universe with ever increasing cycles of productivity and enjoyment, and that is what eye has not seen and ear has not heard that lies before us in the prophetic vision.” That’s what it means to understand the wholeness of all things.
There’s a remarkable statement about this from the apostle Paul, when he’s writing about the nature of creation. “The son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn overall creation, for in Him all things were created. There is this unity, things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, things that are invisible are still real. Whether thrones or powers of rulers or authorities, all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things and in Him, all things hold together.” That is the goodness and the wonder and the wholeness and the integration and the unity that is designed in everything. Therefore, everything is inherently understandable.
By the way, that’s part of why faith and science should always be understood as deeply, deeply complimenting one another. Unfortunately, a lot of Christians don’t understand this, talking foolish, foolish ways about science, but a lot of historians have pointed out the reality is that, science as a discipline emerges only one time in human history as it turns out in that part of the world they’re known as Christians. Them, deeply formed by a Christian worldview that said, “Everything was created by God and God is rational, so we should benefit from rational study. God is also personal and creative, so we couldn’t predict ahead of time what He was going to do so we need to go experiment, empirically verify things. That mindset is part of what made possible the rise of science.” A lot of folks in the history of science say, but now we live in a world where things fall apart.
WB Yeats wrote a poem after World War I called, The Second Coming, where he writes, “Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold,” and that’s what we feel in our world and in our hearts. Our artists speak to that. There’s a great writer, Joan Didion, you might know of her and quite recently she passed away. Her nephew did a documentary on her life four years ago and it was called, The Center Cannot Hold. She was able to articulate that pain in very profound ways. Remarkable life.
Her family actually came to California with the Donner party, long, long time ago. Nancy’s favorite joke about the Donner party is at a restaurant where the maitre d is saying, “Donner party of seven. Donner party of six. Donner party of five.” It’s not my favorite joke, I guess, bad taste, but Nancy likes it.
Anyway, Joan Didion, when her husband died 2003, wrote a book a year or so after that called, The Year of Magical Thinking. One of the themes in that book is, that the center cannot hold, that ultimately meaninglessness is at the heart of everything. The very poignant little refrain in that book is, there is no eye on the sparrow. No one is watching me. You might know that language, it’s from the teaching of Jesus that says, “Not a sparrow can fall from a tree without God knowing and God caring.” In other words, in other words, that little sparrow is part of a glorious whole that God made and that God loves that’s part of Shalom.
Then, that gave rise, a little over a 100 years ago to a song that was written by somebody after they had visited someone who was in quite despair over the loss, the disintegration of their health, why should I be discouraged? Why should the shadows come? When Jesus is my portion, my constant friend is He. His eyes on the sparrow, I know he watches me. (singing) And that’s the one that we go to.
Now, we’re going to turn tomorrow to the person because see, as a person, as a human being, you are made up of parts and they have properties. They are meant to fit together so that I can be whole, so that you can be whole. And what is sometimes called spiritual formation, is the forming or reforming or transforming us into wholeness under God.
But what you might think about right now is, what’s some area in your life where it feels like things are falling apart, because here’s the deal, I can’t hold myself together, but God can. And so, when your world is falling apart, your life can be held together and I know this is true. I’ve experienced this.
When it felt like things were melting down in the worst ways that I can imagine, to sit still before God and it’s hard to put this into words, but to have this sense, I am still here, I can still pursue meaning and love even in the midst of things falling apart. Something hasn’t fallen apart and of course, that something is God. God is okay and His eye is on the sparrow and He watches me.
So, right now, you bring wherever it is in your world that it feels like things are falling apart, in stillness before God for just a moment. That relationship, your body or your health, your finances, your job, your emotions. Jesus is my portion, my constant friend. His eye is on the sparrow. He is holding us together. He is holding all things together. He’s got the whole world in His hands.