Impossible Situations and Everyday Kindness

A friend told me about being in the right place and the right time that led to an encounter with some people who seemed to be in an impossible situation.  People in various impossible situations usually understand that there is a God in heaven, and usually call out for some form of help or relief. 

And, sometimes, the impossible becomes possible as God uses people and situations to bring relief and open up possibilities to those in need.

If I think long enough about impossible situations and a God “with whom all things are (at least, theoretically) possible,“ eventually I think of the very first impossible human situation, and then, the second.

In the Garden of Eden there were no impossible situations, including the possibility that they would partake of forbidden fruit.    The absence of impossible situations is different from the absence of every possibility.

When they fell from this state of grace, beauty and all being right in their world, through disobedience, the whole world was changed and opened to all kinds of possibilities of evil, God’s absence, and painful states of being and consequences.

When they were banished from the garden (and all that they knew to be good and right in their world, including a constant sense of God’s presence and joy over them), they must have thought they were going out into an impossible situation.

How could they possibly live and exist (and so much more) outside of this Garden?

And then, before long, they bore children and one of their sons killed the other.  And then he also was sent away into another unknown and impossible situation. 

I think the first hallmark of being in a seemingly impossible situation is fear.  Anytime I’ve been in a difficult or seemingly impossible situation, I feel afraid.

We are afraid because our needs and our wants (some legitimate, some not) are not being met and we have no means to truly control that reality.

Sometimes I wonder (as we all do), are there people living regularly in “possible” situations and how might we make this happen in our own lives?  Of course, assuming these are human beings, if their situation appears possible it is either an illusion or a temporary state.

Because we are all one step away from finding ourselves in an impossible situation, or yet additional impossible situations.  And it can feel additionally burdensome for someone to offer us some easy solution as an outsider looking in, to our own impossible situation.

It is not possible for non-God creatures to fully fix someone else’s impossible situation, because they can never know (nor have the fixing power) the intricacies and nature of the particular seeming impossibilities.  Yet, the God who sees, knows and cares for all of His creatures who are dwelling and suffering outside of His divine, loving rule makes Himself and His presence known in impossible situations. The story my friend told me is an example of being part of some everyday miracle in the eyes of strangers.

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It would be too easy and otherwise off-base to lift one scripture text such as “with God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26) and insist on applying it to every difficulty within all of our many impossible situations. That would not be true faith (nor faithfulness) or faith in God’s ultimate rule and care, but something else. Yet, every day we encounter motivational memes, expressions and much more that seem to be doing just that.

At times we all find ourselves desperately doing or thinking in these ways, and the possibility that sometimes these seemingly-small, little lifelines may actually have some meaning in some moment from God, further makes His ways inscrutable.

I have a tiny craft pillow I once bought on impulse when I was in some impossible-feeling-situation and happened to see this item.  It now sits on my windowsill collecting dust and basically serves as some trail marker from just one split-second-moment on what can feel like an overall difficult life journey and seemingly endless wandering toward some promised land, yet never arriving.

Like in Narnia, it can feel like it is always winter, but never Christmas. And the longer I dwell in this winter of sorts, the more I fear it will never end or even moreso, if spring somehow came to me that I would be incapable of keeping it from returning to a dreadful, dark winter…

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On a road in my area someone has put out some small little signs on a stretch of a neighborhood thruway that say “God’s got this.”  It’s probably not any supernatural mystery that when I drive I contemplate, nor that especially when driving alone at night time (as I grow even more weary of impossible days within a seemingly impossible and lonely situation) that a statement someone made to me over 20 years ago still feels as true as ever (“you are in a situation that appears to have no hope and no end”) that my eye might catch the little white sign with black lettering that this stranger put out. At just the same moment that I’m internally crying out in some form, “where is my deliverance?” (concerning a plethora of things) I read a little sign that says, “God’s got this.”

I can remember seeing that little sign and it giving me momentary respite from worry and from fear, but always, I return to that condition of navigating the difficult and the unknown.

The truth is that we are all (and some of us, especially) in great need. But even moreso, “woe to the one” who is alone, for when they fall, no one seems to see or know, and, the alone person can be easily overpowered by the bombardment of life’s difficulties.

For me, as a twice-divorced woman, the immediate impossibilities seem pragmatic and range from not being able to carry certain heavy weights I don’t believe I was ultimately designed to carry, to not being able to figure out the reason my TV remote was suddenly not working.

But the deeper fears, needs and desires show up in full human and existential forms of dread at the end of each impossibly long and difficult day and start of yet another.

This is probably long enough commentary on something that most readers will not find entirely foreign to them, since I need to keep moving forward into yet another seemingly impossible day which might, and likely will, hold an amount of possibilities.

It seems to me many times there is but one possible choice and that is to be faithful to that which is in front of me in the immediate sense, and to look to God for the strength to persevere, without any guarantees nor specific expectations that anything will ever change.

The human condition is now, ultimately, one of fear of the unknown and uncertainty about the future. Every day I see others who are living in some particular story of fear, unknowns and uncertainties.  And, some humans live closer to that flame, or edge, than others.

And a friend sharing the story of an encounter with people living even closer to the edge of certain perils than I am, in a sense, led to these thoughts expressed here at the beginning of my new day.

I think about a writing I once saw and made into a calligraphy piece because I liked it.  It seems to me that in God’s world there is some combination of both randomness and intentionality…