Chapter 33: Acceptance of Divine Order
ACCEPTANCE OF DIVINE ORDER
ONE thing that makes a marriage work is the acceptance of a divine order. Either there is an order or there is not, and if there is one which is violated disorder is the result —disorder on the deepest level of the personality. I believe there is an order, established in the creation of the world, and I believe that much of the confusion that characterizes our society is the result of the violation of God’s design. The blueprint has been lost. Everybody is guessing at how the building is supposed to look.
Yesterday the Apollo-Soyuz mission, the American-Russian rendezvous in space, was completed. What staggering complexities had to function and fit and work together perfectly for ten days in order to bring these capsules to union, then to separate them and set them down on their appointed targets in Russia and in the pathless Pacific at the appointed minutes. (There was a variation in the American capsule’s timing of twenty-four seconds in ten days.) But there had been a design. Everything was ordered and planned. Everything went according to that plan, and what price and relief we all felt because it did.
What a relief it is to know that there is a divine design. This knowledge is the secret of serenity. Jesus is the perfect example of a human life lived in serenity and obedience to the Father’s will. He moved through the events of His life without fuss or hurry, He met men and women with grace. He was able to say, “I do always those things that please the Father” —and it must have been with no variations of even twenty-four seconds. At the end of His time with the disciples as He sat with them at supper, knowing what was about to take place, He demonstrated to them that the knowledge of His origin, and destiny gave Him power to do things which to them would have been unthinkable. “Jesus, knowing that He came from God and was going to God, rose from supper and took a towel. . . .” In the face of the betrayal that He knew was coming, in the face of His own death, He took the place of a slave and washed the disciples’ feet. He could do that because He knew who He was and whose He was. He could face also the events of the coming night and day. It was not weakness which enabled Him to become a slave. It was not resignation that took Him to Calvary. He had both accepted and willed the Father’s will.
You and I can be steadied, directed, and held by the knowledge of where we came from and where we are going. To know that the whole world moves in harmony at God’s bidding is wonderfully stabilizing.
The notion of hierarchy comes from the Bible. The words superior and inferior refer originally to position, not to intrinsic worth. A person sitting in the top of a stadium would be superior to —higher up than —a person on the front row. Cherubim and seraphim were superior to archangels, archangels to angels, and man was “made a little lower than the angels.” The earth and its creatures were formed prior to man, so man’s position in God’s scale is not necessarily determined by the chronology of creation, for that would give the animals a superior place. His position was assigned to him when he was commanded to subdue the earth and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth. “Thou hast put all things under his feet,” wrote the psalmist.
The psalms are full of expressions of God’s authority and control, of measurement, limitation, direction. Psalm 104, for example, speaks of it: “Thou didst set the earth on its foundations, so that it should never be shaken. . . . The mountains rose, the valleys sank down to the place which Thou didst appoint for them. Thou didst set a bound which they should not pass. . . . Thou hast made the moon to mark the seasons; the sun knows its time for setting. . . . When thou sendest forth thy spirit they are created.”
The book of Job describes perfection of plan, measurement, boundary, and harmony: “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements —surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it? On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?” The same chapter uses expressions such as “shut in the sea with doors,” “prescribed bounds,” “commanded the morning,” “caused the dawn to know its place,” “gates of death,” “gates of deep darkness,” “storehouses of the snow,” “the place where light is distributed,” “a way for the thunderbolt.” A place for everything and everything in its place. Job, a man overwhelmed by his own physical sufferings and material losses, is brought to a new and deep knowledge of who God is and a recognition that all is wholly under His command.
The stars have kept to their courses, the seas to their boundaries. The moon sets, the sun rises, the tides ebb and flow. Animals answer to their proper nature and green things grow and produce flower and fruit in their assigned seasons.
In startling contrast the letter of Jude refers to angels who “failed in their high duties and abandoned their proper sphere,” or, in another translation, “did not keep their own position,” and, as a result had to be “deprived by God of both light and liberty.”
Angels and men, so far as we know, are the only creatures who have been guilty of this refusal to keep their appointed places. “Even the stork in the heavens knows her time,” wrote Jeremiah, “and the turtledove, swallow, and crane keep the time of their coming; but my people know not the ordinance of the Lord.”