A Lottery Life

There is something beautiful about symmetry. It is pleasing to the eye. By contrast, irregularity and unevenness and lop-sidedness seem distasteful and ugly. The Law says No one who has a blemish shall draw near, such as one who has a limb too long (Lev 21:18). Such a man could not serve the altar because, being asymmetrical, he was blemished. Symmetry is beautiful. Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than in a uniform life. When a man’s thoughts, words and actions harmonize the result is like a beautiful fugue. Yet too many in our day have lives that are disorderly and irregular. Their minds, mouths and manners are all at odds and disproportionate. Their experience is not all of one piece. Sometimes right, sometimes wrong, normally confused, often inconsistent, there is no uniform godliness. Their lives are like a lottery in which thoughts, words and actions are jumbled together and governed by “chance”.

This helps to explain David’s prayer, Teach me your way, O Lord, that I may walk in your truth; unite my heart to fear your name (Ps 86:11). He longs for a well-ordered life, when all is done well with a single focus, a united heart. Not a multiplicity of ends but one overarching purpose predominates. For us it means an eye fixed on Christ and a clear sense of final judgment. Under the Spirit’s blessing this brings harmony to all the disparate aspects our lives. Teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom (Ps 90:12). A divided mind and wavering heart will produce an inconsistent life, a man who is unstable in all his ways (Jas 1:8). But one who knows Jesus and his own mortality, expecting the consummation of all things, will enjoy increasing symmetry in knowledge to think well, grace to speak well and power to live well to the glory of God.