God, Dentistry, and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

     I hadn't read Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in years, but the prospect of having to spend a few hours in the dentist's chair over the past couple weeks, made me decide to buy the audiobook. It seemed like the perfect distraction to whatever would be going on in my mouth at the time.

     We all think about the purpose and meaning of our lives, and the following dialogue between two of the characters in the book struck me:

     "The chances of finding out what's really going on in the universe are so remote, the only thing to do is hang the sense of it and keep yourself occupied... I'd far rather be happy than right any day."
     "And are you?"
     "No, that's where it all falls down, of course."
     "Pity, it sounded like quite a good lifestyle otherwise."

     Life does seem completely chaotic and random at times, but in Morning Prayer today, the ancient prophet Isaiah had a different outlook:

For thus says the Lord,
who created the heavens
(he is God!),
who formed the earth and made it
(he established it;
he did not create it a chaos,
he formed it to be inhabited!):
I am the Lord, and there is no other.
I did not speak in secret,
in a land of darkness;
I did not say to the offspring of Jacob,
‘Seek me in chaos.’
I the Lord speak the truth,
I declare what is right.
                              – Isa. 45:18, 19

     God seems to say to us in this passage, "No, I made the world to be what it is. Stop making it all so complicated. I didn't create a system where you have to wade through chaos to find me. I did not speak in the darkness. I am here with you. I always have been."