From Chaos to Order

“You have a desk!” For weeks, we have been surrounded by boxes. We still are surrounded by boxes. The garage is a staging area for items in motion. We probably have brought too many things for the amount of space we have. But in the midst of all of that chaos, a bit of life is beginning to emerge. We have the bedrooms set up. They have beds with mattresses and places for people to sit. We have our dining room table set up. Last night we and our son’s family sat down for a family dinner - seven of us around the oak table that once was in Susan’s parents’ house. It has moved from Montana to South Dakota and now is a focal point of our home in Washington. And last night we cleared enough boxes to leave the top of the library table, which has also made several Interstate moves, clear. The only thing on the table is my laptop computer and a copy of the lease for this home. There are still plenty of boxes to unpack and there will be plenty for weeks to come as we sort out the complexities of this move, but there are patches of order in our lives that begin to help us feel that disorder isn’t the only way of life.

Yesterday we helped our son move his household goods. Just as we were sorting out where we were going to live, they had an opportunity to sell their home and make the move to a place with a bit of acreage to extend their gardening and have additional fruit trees. Their new place is going to be a wonderful place for the children and will enable them to become more self sufficient in the years to come. It also has a barn for shared shop space. This winter I should be able to work on my boats in their shop. A lot of wonderful things are coming together for our family.

To get to where we plan to go, however, has involved a fair amount of chaos. Stacks of boxes surround us and it will take time to unpack and arrange our possessions. New decisions need to be made about what to keep and what to release. I already know where the Habitat for Humanity Restore in our new home is located. Good news for us, they have a furniture department, so we have a good place to donate excess furniture. We’ll find Good Will and other places to donate things as time passes.

Within the next couple of days, we will turn our attention back to South Dakota. The snowfall in the hills is a reminder that winter is coming. We still have to finish cleaning our home there to get it ready for its new owner and there is one more trip to be made with our pickup and car over the passes to the northwest. But we can see the end of this phase of our lives. We can imagine Thanksgiving dinner around our family table. We can think of Advent and Christmas with a new church family.

Among the oldest stories of our people are the stories of Creation that speak of order emerging from chaos. “The earth was without form and darkness was on the face of the deep,” our people begin one of those stories. It goes on to report that God started creation with light and a separation of light from darkness. In our case, the electricity for lights required a call to Puget Sound Energy. Gas to heat the house and water comes from Cascade Natural Gas. Garbage and Sewer is the City of Mount Vernon. There is a separate water utility. And, of course, we need to have the Internet connected to our new home. There are a lot of “to do” items on our list. Our people have long told story after story about creation emerging from chaos.Those stories are related to the many stories we have about our people moving from one place to another. Many journeys of our people have had less that specific destinations at the beginning of the trip. Abraham and Sara had never seen the place to which they were heading. They probably didn’t realize that it would take many generations to reach the promised land. By the time of Moses, our people still didn’t know the exact destination. They wandered in the wilderness for forty years before Joshua, armed with information from 12 spies who went ahead to scout out the territory, was able to lead the people of Israel into the promised land.

Our stories remind us that God is always calling us to the future. Often we do not have the ability to imagine how the future will look. Learning to trust and to take risks is part of the process of living a life of faith in a world of chaos.

None of us can quite see how our world will emerge from the current pandemic. We suspect that face masks have now become a way of life and will be so for quite a while to come. We are learning to have meetings over Zoom and worship on FaceBook. But we also can remember the days of building community face to face and gathering for worship in beloved places. We long for our return to those sacred spaces. In the meantime, we are learning to live with a bit of chaos as we reorganize our ways of building community and staying in touch with each other.

In the midst of all of the change, we find peace in sitting on solid chairs around a table that has served our family for generations and will continue to be the center of our life together. It gives me a sense of stability to sit at the same desk in a new place as I write in my journal. Some things remain the same even in the midst of all of the change. Surrounded by the love of family and friends, grateful for all of their gifts of time and support, life is good. We can endure the chaos as we long for order.

Copyright (c) 2020 by Ted E. Huffman. I wrote this. If you would like to share it, please direct your friends to my web site. If you'd like permission to copy, please send me an email. Thanks!

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