Wax

This week, I was introduced to the 18th century mystic, Jean-Pierre de Caussade. Several of my classmates had a hard time with a statement that he wrote: "The events of every moment are stamped with the will of God." What with there being evil and all, it begs the question, "Every moment? Really? Hiroshima was stamped with the will of God? Dachau? Phnom Penh? Santa Barbara?"
Yes. The events of every moment are stamped with the will of God. (he continues) How holy is His name! How right it is to bless it and to treat it as something which sanctifies all it touches....O Lord, may You rule my heart, nourish it, purify it, make it holy, and let it triumph over all its enemies. Most precious moment! How small it is to my bodily eyes, but how great to the eyes of my faith! How can I think of it as nothing when it is thought of so highly by my heavenly Father? All that comes from Him is most excellent and bears the imprint of its origin.
I couldn't help it - I thought of a wax seal. Here is a metaphor for baptism, that God came down in the holy waters of our baptism and sealed us as his own. The wax does nothing but receive the imprint of the king. We do not even create the softness - that's the heat of the Holy Spirit who does that. And the signet? It's a cross, of course, a simple cross that we are marked with, which will not be broken until the last day.
I am wax; God is the imprint.
The metaphor does not last, but in answer to those who doubt every moment are stamped with God's will, we can say, "The seal doesn't know the contents of the envelopes. It could be good news for king and country, or news of a defeat." Our job is not to determine the course of events; our job is to proclaim the image of our maker, no matter what news lies inside.

The hardest thing to do is to refrain from saying, "How could a loving God..." because then we are attempting to make God in our image. "How could a loving God..." do something that we don't consider nice or fair or just? "How could a loving God..." watch as an animal or race or field become extinct? "If God is good..." how could God disappoint me so?
Our purpose is not to skip to the loo over every one of the moments God gives us on this earth; that's lunacy, to rejoice when there are mass killings. Our purpose is to find in every moment the imprint of God, to choose the course of action God wills for each of us, and to live that out with purpose, to bear the imprint of our origin.