Order

Order

2/13/14

Most of us have a phrase that we remember about our parents that still rings loud in our heads.  While it may seem like these are little details about our lives they actually reflect many attributes when it comes to their ways of living.  Have we ever truly thought about the order in which our parents and our own lives follow and where that order comes from?  The origin of our desire to have order originates from our Creator and since we are His offspring, that means He has a specific order that we share.  This would also explain why we are smitten with the defining worldly chaos each day of our lives and why it is so important that we all maintain this order within our individual realms.

How many times have we been counseled by our parents to clean our rooms?  It seems like Bonnie and I are continually telling our girls to clean their room because it almost sequentially filled with clutter.  Some of the times the floor of their room is completely covered and when they walk on it their feet never touch the carpet.  According to my two youngest girls this is the time when our “parenting classes” on anger kick in and we lose all concept of fairness.  Many discussions have been completed in trying to figure out why they like to live in such a manner.  Anyway I do know that their overall progress in homework, daily activities and general life is inhibited in some ways due to the fact that they do not have order within their own living space.

My mother always expected my room to be clean and because of the habits that I had when I was young she had plenty of opportunities to remind me of her orderly requirements.  One of mom’s favorite phrases, which I heard just a couple of evenings ago, is “let’s get organized” and as she stated it in a jokingly manner it still brought back memories of when she used those words in a meaningful way. There is absolutely nothing wrong with organization and everything that is portrayed through that word represents a forward pattern.  It is obvious that many people, groups, companies and governments do not function or operate in this manner because most universities offer a Bachelor’s degree in Organizational Management, which reinforces that there are thousands of us out there who did not listen to our mothers when they told us to keep our rooms clean.

I remember that I would get so involved in the details of my mess making that I would lose track of time and suddenly be reminded that it was time for bed, or for dinner of for other events in my life.  I would not have enough time to clean my room before my extended time away so I just left it.  I would then be called upon to clean my room when I walked through the door to which I would immediately begin to give my excuse as to why it was not clean before I left.  The excuse seems relatively reasonable to me but mom never bought it and told me to correct things as soon as possible.  She was never mean or hateful about it but I could tell that she was not too thrilled with how I had left my room.  At the time I had no idea of what having a clean room meant on the orderly side of my life and even though my office is a mess sometimes and my desk are atrocious most of the time I now understand why she did her best to instill this principle in my life.

I also remember that when it was time for me to leave for the activities that I was involved in, it seemed like time sped up and I would forget something that I really needed for the meeting, game or activity that I was going to be at.  Or I would remember that I needed a certain article for my activity but due to the fact that my room was a mess and that I was short on time I became frustrated when I could not immediately find this object.  I believe that all of us at some point in our lifetimes have been in this situation and can also relate when we say to ourselves that we will never do this again; that is until the next time rolls around.  It is this crisis situation period that seem to bring us down the most and we then long to return to a normal set of living or working conditions as soon as possible.  But do we take into consideration the influences that enable us to not keep an orderly status within our lives and is there a reason that the clutter of our lives even matter?

When I was in blood bank school I remember that my professors and lab instructors stressed the importance of us having an order that we process the specimens and how if we lose that order and do not complete each step in the correct order that our results could possibly be incorrect.  They told us that as long as we kept the direction that we had been taught clear and kept the order in which we were shown that no matter what we faced in the blood bank we should have no problems.

We had daily blood banking exercises that included many different types of tests and results.  Most of the time the blood bank samples would come to each of us one at a time which was not too bad since the lab instructors would be giving their lectures while we worked. However, as time progressed the number of specimens that we would receive increased so that we would be sometimes working on two patients at a time all the while we were listening to the lecture being given.  This was all part of the process to teach us to keep ourselves focused and in order even though distractions may occur.  All of this seems kind of tough but when one is working with a human life time, concentration and order is a must to ensure accurate results are provided.

The importance of us having order in a life or death situation could literally mean the life or death of a patient.  That person is depending on me to provide quick and accurate results in order to keep her / him alive.  And if for any reason my concentration or order is messed up and I have to start the process over again, I am placing that person’s life in greater jeopardy.  So if our jobs require a specific order about them that means there is a pretty good reason as to why God placed His quality of order within us.

Way back in the Garden of Eden times God gave us the authority to have dominion over the earth.  Now this concept of dominion consists of a wide range of discussion and topics but I am going to limit it to one specific section and that is the concept of order.  When a person or government has order within their infrastructure it will be well known that those involved will represent a forward progression.  An individual, group or government can move in a continually forward direction as long as they are organized and that the ones who are in charge of their own areas complete the job necessary and in a timely manner.  Growing and moving in a forward direction are directly related to each other yet we have recently witnessed a growth of responsibilities but no forward movement, which is a clear sign that there are many cluttered desks and offices present.

Ever since I have begun to write I have found that my desk has become more cluttered with the information that God has shared with me. This is not God’s fault because He has me writing things but it is mine that I have not completed the assigned tasks that He has asked me to share.  Yes, I have completed many writings and I have many more to complete but that still does not give me the authority to keep a cluttered desk.  I have noticed that when my desk becomes cluttered that I lose direction where it concerns my writing.  Not that I lose the direction about what I am suppose to write but I lack the directional pathway that would allow me to get the job done. 

How does this relate to our relationship with God you ask?  Well we must remember that God has His own order built within His enormous inner being.  It is evident in the way that He has created every living thing on the earth.  Every little detail that affects our lives He has placed according to His specific order.  We still to this day cannot fully understand why things work and operate in the manner that they do but we are learning that each individual life form is uniquely constructed in such a manner that no other being is similar.  This order that we are learning about is also instilled within our lives as well and when one thinks about this order it should be understood that it is there for a reason.  If our systems did not have a timely and functional order they would collapse upon themselves within two seconds after conception.  All living creatures need to have this type of orderly fashion to live and to continue their species.

What I am about to say will light up my mother’s face and prove that she was right all along because being organized is a God thing.  God had to have a specific order in which He created things which means that there is a specific reason as to why He kept this order.  Can you imagine if humanity began its existence in the shape and manner that we are today?  God would be a legitimate laugh and joke to the world if this was the case.  God created the perfect beings for the perfect reasons and it was our doings that changed all of the godly order that He established, not Him.  The first creations were perfect and they chose to create the mess that we find ourselves in today.  God understood that we would need a perfect and orderly example to refer back to when troubled times or excitable times approach our lives and through His perfect creation He provided this example.

Look at our lives today and one will recognize that there is so many crises and dysfunction within our immediate and national living conditions that we cannot fully have the directional flow that we need to sustain our way of existence.  This is not a product of God but of the choices that we have made as human beings.  There is nothing wrong with growing but as we are generously proving to the world our girth is far ahead of our footsteps and it is all due to the fact that we have lost track of time and of our responsibilities as humans that God has given us to complete.  Everything has a purpose and it is necessary that we complete that purpose or we have failed in our abilities as a race. 

The world is going to increasingly demand more of our attention and as this amount increases we need to be as prepared and organized as possible to accomplish the tasks set before us.  It is also apparent that we are now watching and reaping the fruits of our cluttered lives and at the same time ignoring that we have a legitimate problem with our focus.  We have turned our eyes on physical pleasure and have ignored the real problems that have been sitting on our desks for quite some time.  Our public image has overtaken our attention which has forced us to accumulate many unnecessary projects in order to keep up this image.  What we are doing is making fools of ourselves and placing us into a crisis mode of operating which is devastating for everyone involved.  God gave us minds and a thought process to keep these types of situations at bay, but we have allowed our enemy to gain a foothold in our lives enough to adjust our focus from the real issues that face us.

When we are in an orderly state and instances arise that cause us to challenge our memory we will have the sense to know that our results can be compromised which will trigger an automatic restart button inside our heads.  If we are not organized and filled with clutter around us that will represent the mindset that we have and if something goes wrong we will not have the skills to remember which step we completed last if we are interrupted.  Do any of these situations where clutter is involved bring to mind any sort of conditions that we are currently experiencing within our world?

Some of the shenanigans that governments, courts and legislative bodies try to pull out of their hats is totally absurd and is a product of a cluttered lifestyle.  I do not care if you are on one side of the aisle or not one must notice all of the conglomerated goof ups that the world governments are trying to explain to their constituents much less correct them.  God did not create this type of cluttered lives, for if He did then His methods of creation would have been doomed from the beginning.  How hard is it for humans to admit that they have gone astray and have messed up their lives so much that they need true and honest guidance?  If we could lose our pride long enough to see what direction that we are promoting and heading into we could understand that the results that we are producing are not worth a plug nickel.

We also ignore the fact that the situational circumstances could have been prevented if we had just allowed ourselves to have a relationship with God.  It was the mess that Adam and Eve created that broke the relational bonds between God and man.  It was the cluttering of leaves that they hid behind when God came for His routine talk with them.  Church, do not believe for one second that you have nothing to do with this topic or are exempt from the problems of the world.  You are so cluttered up that you cannot even figure out what is worldly and what is godly, so you have no room to talk either.

The common denominator of all of this cluttering is the human being and our allowance of the junk that we accept into our lives, and we need to get it through our hard heads that our problems and crises are going to be present and that they will exponentially increase; in short they will not go away!!  That is why we need to allow God to show us how to fix our cluttered desks and allow Him to lead us into the correct forward path that He ordained in the first place.  God is a complete God and has nothing to do with half way or incomplete, if He was then He would have no problems with us being lukewarm.

A popular slogan that was used a couple of years ago was “we want change”.  I believe that if a person sits back and honestly looks at the evidence and weighs upon the truth portrayed that we can see that when humans are the driving force behind such an option that it will result in much of the same as what is already established.  There is no doubt that our philosophies across the world have incorporated the cluttered beliefs that we are in control of our lives.  This clutter is destroying any capability that we have in truthfully moving in a forward direction due to all of the garbage that we think is necessary to justify our existence.  Plus, how can we pursue any direction while we are keeping the faith in all of the clutter that we have accumulated?  It is impossible and it is a great example of what happens when humans take over their lives.  It does not matter on which level of existence that you claim residence, this truth will not change.

God is the only answer for our world and the situational messes that we have gotten ourselves into.  Killing off the problems or getting rid of an inopportune condition will not solve the issue it will only compound the problem and further clutter our directions.  Turning things over to God and listening to His voice for advice and guidance has proven over and over that His words are the true way.  God established order from the very foundations of our existence and He did it for a reason.  He understands that with the choices that we make we will need His guidance to ensure our survival.  Order is a godly characteristic and using a secular term for God’s standards here, we do need a new world order one that places God first and humans second.  Consider this option and if we choose to accept it our world will be a totally different place.

DLB