The Unraveling

“God’s in his heaven–all’s right with the world!”

At least, that’s what Anne of Green Gables told me when I was in junior high. I believed her. Even into high school and college, the belief still fit my experiences. Sure, I had my stresses with busy classes, catty friends, and the usual boy drama. But when things went wrong, the world was still okay. If there were problems, there was help. If there were questions, there were answers.

Then I graduated college and real life began.

I moved to India and dove into a river of constant movement–bustling streets, honking taxis, dogs and children running free. A few months in that beautiful country, though, and I saw that beneath the rainbows of fabrics and the pungent spices lingering in the air, there was deep hurt. Business men swindled customers. A 13-year-old girl went to work one day, and her family never saw her again. Every morning I waved at a lady who sat on her porch staring off into space, and every day she stared vacantly. Eventually the neighbors told me her husband had beat her so many times, she’d lost her mind. It seemed the longer I lived in India, the more horror stories I heard.

Beyond the violence, opposing spiritual beliefs swirled about the city. Calls to prayer rolled out from the mosques. Sikh temples blared their sacred scriptures from loudspeakers. One member of our little team played his audio Bible on the street, and hundreds gathered to listen, begging him to come again, desperate for truth. Where was truth, and how would people ever find it?

God might be in his heaven, but all was not right with the world.

I and the missionaries with me responded to India with panic, doing whatever we could to help as many people as possible as quickly as possible. There was no time for a day spent at the park or the rose garden–no, people were dying and we had to rescue them. An hour at home was a person lost. Underneath all this frenzied activity rumbled a deeper angst: God wasn’t saving India, so we had to.

Today, five years later, I realize that both Anne of Green Gables and the missionaries were wrong. Anne was wrong; all is not well with the world. And the missionaries were wrong; it’s not up to us to save the world.

It seems that Christians fall in either one of two camps. Either they say, “God’s in control,” and do little to fight the injustices in the world. Or they act as if everything depends on their efforts, as if they are the world’s only hope for salvation.

I propose a third camp, however, one that acknowledges that the God who said “Cease striving and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations” is the same God who said, “Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.”

Cease striving.

Give yourself fully.

The God who commands us to be still is the same God who commands us to work. Why? Because our labor is not in vain. It’s not empty. It does make a difference. And yet God is the one who exalts himself, regardless of what we do.