if the foundations be destroyed...

If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?

Ps 11:3

Earlier this evening I set out to do some sudoku puzzle, that very involving logic puzzle. So I was just about done, and was feeling very proud, when I discovered I had just input the same digit twice in one line, all logic leading until that point had seemed rock solid,  I could not see why the math was not coming together , so I had to erase the whole thing and start from scratch. Of course I decided that my life does not really depend on this here one puzzle, and I lay it aside for more constructive self-driven activities.

Nevertheless it got me thinking about this whole state I found myself in – the whole being stuck in the middle. The resemblance to the puzzle I was doing was astounding. The game, for those unfamiliar, is a 9 by 9 square puzzle, so it has 9 rows, 9 columns and nine 3 by 3 smaller squares. The objective is to fill up those squares with the numbers 1 to 9 such that all digits appear once in every row, every column and every 3 by 3 square. It’s purely a game of logic. So back to my earlier point, I discovered that maybe when I started out, I may have been logically sound in my reasoning, following the clues I’d been given -  in the puzzle they give you a few numbers to get you going. But somewhere along the way, and I don’t know where exactly, some flawed logic found its way in. And so, from that point, no matter  how correct the inferences may have been, the answers, the decisions made, the conclusions drawn, none of them could have been correct, because they were based on wrong data in the first place. And when that happens, it’s easier to just erase it all and take it up from the start, moving once again from what’s known to the unknown, this time with the advantage of hindsight.

If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do? So it turns out that the solution to all my dilemmas is really very simple: take it from the top. It’s always the simple commands that are the hardest to obey though. But like a wise man I have come to greatly rely on in recent times said:

The Lord will not go after you, He will not plead, but every time He meets you on that point He will simply repeat, “If you really mean what you say, those are the conditions, sell all you have. Turn it all over to me.” Undress yourself before God of everything that might be a possession, until you are a mere conscious human being, then give God that.

It turns out it isn’t as much an issue of “How close can I get to my surrender without losing all control” as much as it is an issue of how yielded I’m willing to be, how capable I am of losing all control, how willing I am to give up my right to own myself (which is indeed rightfully mine) for the “goal of the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus”. It’s the ability to say, like Paul, everything is permissible, everything is lawful, but not everything is beneficial, not everything is expedient, I will not be brought under the power of any. Others may, but I can’t. Now, that right there, that is the real foundation. That is where the math must begin.