Paradox

Have you heard Michael Card's song, "God's Own Fool"? It's one of my all-time favorites.

Seems I've imagined Him all of my life
As the wisest of all of mankind
But if God's Holy wisdom is foolish to men
He must have seemed out of His mind

For even His family said He was mad
And the priests said a demon's to blame
But God in the form of this angry young man
Could not have seemed perfectly sane

Chorus
When we in our foolishness thought we were wise
He played the fool and He opened our eyes
When we in our weakness believed we were strong
He became helpless to show we were wrong
And so we follow God's own fool
For only the foolish can tell-
Believe the unbelievable
And come be a fool as well

So come lose your life for a carpenter's son
For a madman who died for a dream
And you'll have the faith His first followers had
And you'll feel the weight of the beam
So surrender the hunger to say you must know
Have the courage to say I believe

For the power of paradox opens your eyes
And blinds those who say they can see

Chorus

So we follow God's own Fool
For only the foolish can tell
Believe the unbelievable,
And come be a fool as well

"For the power of paradox opens your eyes, and blinds those who say they can see." Mmm, that hits deep. I like it.

Interestingly enough, battling cancer is like that: paradoxical.

A healthy-feeling, energetic person who feels better than she has in years is told that she's dying, so she is given a potentially lethal cocktail of medicine to kill what's killing her, loses her health from the meds, finds out that she either has or doesn't have cancer, and then has to regain her health if she lives through the brew.

She is in the prime of life with a beautiful joyful family, has finally found her place and purpose, begins to see how she can make a difference, prays daily to be a blessing, and then is slammed with the news that no one wants to hear: "You've got months." All that she holds dear, all that feeling of arriving, is snatched from her at that moment. 

She refuses to accept the death sentence, believing that God's word is clear about God healing all of our diseases, (didn't Jesus do that?), yet is told so often that God's will might be her death. That is difficult to accept. "May God's will be done."

She reads the Bible, wanting to be submissive, yet her heart feels like Jacob, "I won't let you go unless You bless me." Do you notice something about that story? God had to wound Jacob before he realized who he was wrestling against. Why do we long for God and fight Him so long?

May the power of paradox open our eyes, so that the fleeting days we have on this earth may be busy following the all-knowing, all-powerful God who made Himself nothing according to the world's standards to give life to the people who wanted Him dead because they wanted to protect their way of life, paradoxically.

-sc