Solomon's Porch:The Haphazard Order of Things

One great essential lesson in Christianity is... 

• that God’s order comes to us in the haphazard. 
• We are men and women, we have appetites, we have to live on this earth, and things do happen by chance; 
• what is the use of saying they do not? 
• “One of the most immutable things on earth is mutability.” 
• Your life and mine is a bundle of chance. 

It is absurd to say it is fore-ordained... 

• for you to have so many buttons on your tunic, 
• and if that is not fore-ordained, then nothing is. 
• If things were fore-ordained, there would be no sense of responsibility at all. 

A false spirituality... 

• makes us look to God to perform a miracle instead of doing our duty. 
• We have to see that we do our duty in faith in God.
• Jesus Christ undertakes to do everything a man cannot do, 
• but not what a man can do. 

Things do happen by chance... 

• and if we know God, we recognize that His order comes to us in that way. 
• We live in this haphazard order of things, 
• and we have to maintain the abiding order of God in it. 

The doctrine of the Sacrament ...

• teaches the conveying of God’s presence to us 
• through the common elements of bread and wine. 
• We are not to seek success or prosperity. 
• If we can get hold of our relationship to God in eating and drinking, 
• we are on the right basis of things.

Adapted Excerpt From

Shade of His Hand

Oswald Chambers