Do you feel as if your life is out of control, chaotic, or at least disorganized?  Welcome to my world!

Or, on the other hand, do you feel as if your life lacks spontaneity?  Again, welcome to my world!

Perhaps you are like me, and you struggle with both order and spontaneity.  Take heart!  You might be able to make progress in both directions at the same time.

Here is my 12-step affirmation for today:

“Today, by God’s grace and with His strong help, I am choosing to act in a more orderly way.  This frees me up to be more spontaneous, since I am not always immersed in chaos.”

I do not think that order and spontaneity are sworn enemies.  In fact, I suspect that they are close friends and traveling companions.

Of course, order can degenerate into rigidity and compulsive behavior.  Spontaneity can become chaos.  An unbalanced virtue is just a vice in disguise.

On the other hand, it doesn’t have to be so.  My wife is one of the most organized (and organizing) people I’ve ever known.  After forty-five years of marriage, it occurs to me that this is one of the many things that attracted me to her in the first place.  It is still one of the many things that attracts me to her.

But my wife is also one of the most spontaneous, playful people I’ve ever known.  And that also was and is attractive.  Last night, she got me to play a card game called “Slamwich.”  We found the game on a shelf in our rental apartment.  She read through the directions, and we played it.  It was more fun than I thought it would be.  (I won!  This of course helped make it more fun.)

Did you catch the order in the previous paragraph?  She read the rules and then we played.  Order (rules) and spontaneity (play).

I, on the other hand, am sometimes neither orderly nor spontaneous.  However, I am doing better these days.  And I have noticed that when I am doing better on either order or spontaneity, I tend to do better on both.

There is a wonderful old Christian hymn, based on a poem by John Greenleaf Whittier, which contains this exquisite prayer:

“Drop Thy still dews of quietness

till all our strivings cease;

take from our lives the strain and stress

and let our ordered lives confess

the beauty of Thy peace.”

I believe that God is not simply orderly.  I believe that God is the Orderer.  And our lives most definitely should confess the beauty of his peace.

However, I also believe that God is wonderfully spontaneous.  He is always doing new things (Isaiah 43:19).  Perhaps more orderliness would help us all to confess not only the beauty of God’s peace, but also God’s playful spontaneity.

Proverbs 8 tells us that wisdom is God’s oldest creation, there before anything else was there (vss. 22-29).  But Proverbs 8 also tells us that the wisdom that God created was “always at God’s side, filled with delight day after day, rejoicing (literally, “playing”) in his presence” (v. 30, my translation).  If wisdom was the first thing God created, and if it is continually playful, it is no great interpretive leap to say that the Creator himself is playful.

Wisdom’s play, according to Proverbs 8:31, is also directed to humankind.  Wisdom was not only playing in God’s presence.  Wisdom was also “rejoicing” (“playing”) in his inhabited world and delighting in humankind” (my translation).  The same Hebrew word for “rejoicing” or “playing” is used for what wisdom does in relation to God and in relation to humanity.

So, my prayer for myself and you is this: May you and I have an orderly and spontaneous day, week, and life!

Amen!