Booz of Rachab

“By the word of the Lord the heavens were made,
   and all their host by the breath of his mouth.”

That there is Psalm 33:6, which is the verse I got when I searched for “random bible verse”. I kinda gotta wonder if all the Bible verses are included in that search because some of ’em are just “and Salmon begat Booz of Rachab” and some of ’em are not exactly inspirational, like “So we cooked my son and ate him. The next day I said to her, ‘Give up your son and we will eat him.’ But she has hidden her son”, II Kings 6:29. But what we got today is Psalm 33:6, so let’s just go with that.

I’m in the process of getting my head around the idea that I’m gonna start college again in a week. I’ma be an adult degree programmer. And I’m buying a house. Both of these are happening at the same time. I have approximately no money and no idea how I’ma pay for this shit. I guess I’ll pick up shifts – that’s the only way I know to get more money. Don’t think I haven’t considered crime – I have, but the whole possibility of getting caught thing kinda gets in the way. Bank robbery wouldn’t bother my conscious at all – just don’t wanna go to prison. And so, I have been taking refuge in the idea that God will help me. Yep. That’s my plan: pick up shifts and trust in the Lord. He made the heavens and all their host by the breath of His mouth, He can prob’ly figure out a way for me to pay for college and make my mortgage payments.

It isn’t as totally insane as it seems – from my perspective, at least. I’ve been clean and sober for twenty-one years because I made a commitment to the Absolute Mystery. I see that as like a contract – the terms are that God makes it possible for me to not get all fuct up and I do what God wants. There have been times when I didn’t particularly want to do what God wanted me to do, but I did it anyway and it worked out. So I have some experience to go along with what I guess is faith. I don’t know if I have a whole lotta faith. I guess it might seem like I do since I’m plunging on ahead with these projects that are completely outta my financial reach and assuming it’s all gonna work out, but I have a long and storied history of rushing in where angels are too smart to tread and this could just be that again on a bigger scale. When I look into myself, I don’t see anything that looks like the faith to move mountains. But I have a gross and distorted view of myself and everything else because I am mentally afflicted, so it ain’t like I’m a good judge. I’m a member of Generation X – the first generation in American history to have no reasonable expectation that we’d be able to do better financially than our parents, who are Baby Boomers, the worst generation, who won’t get outta the fugging way. It’s looking like the next presidential race is gonna be clogged up with old codgers who’ll continue the trend of declining western civilization, so none of this shit might matter. We might all be living in a Mad Max/Handmaid’s Tale dystopia before the collection agents start banging on my door. That seems more likely than some Democrat giving free college money to everybody.

I think I outlined my three main themes in another post. One of ’em was that things work out better when I do what God wants me to do. As I said, that’s based more on my experience than on any great store of faith. I’m fairly certain that I’m not particularly special. God doesn’t like me better than any other asshole. So it makes sense that anybody who goes out on a limb with no safety line other than a ridiculous hope that God is make things work out okay will enjoy the success I have. Certainly, I expect to do some work. God isn’t gonna just hand me a bachelor’s degree – and if He did, it wouldn’t do me any good because what I actually need is the experience of earning it. I have my associate’s degree someplace – I think – but that piece of paper is actually fairly worthless. The experience of getting it is what’s mattered. God gave me the ability to overcome my own fears and anxieties and do the footwork.

I’m sure that anybody can do this. I’m absolutely certain that anybody, no matter how fucked up in whatever ways, can achieve things they never woulda thought possible by trusting in God and doing Her will. Maybe there are other methods – secular humanism or whatever – but I ain’t had any success with those, so I ain’t testifying to their efficacy. I have had an astonishing amount of success with the God plan. Here lately, ever since I got the call to become a Lutheran pastor, I’ve really been embracing the idea that I don’t actually have a fuckin’ clue what’s going on. I mean, I thought I knew what kinda person I was and what I believed and all that and it turned out that I was way wrong, so I’m just gonna scrap any concept that I mighta had because I dunno. And it isn’t bothersome at all. I’m experiencing zero anxiety at this moment. I’m still gonna take my antidepressant tonight – for me to not do that would be similar to jumping off the roof of Herod’s temple and Jesus said not to do that dumb shit. But yeh – I’m good.