The Uncontrollable Spirit

Summary

For a long time Jenny and I have had this anxious little game we play when we come back home from being away on vacation. As we turn into our neighborhood we ask each other: “Will our house still be there? What if it burned down while we were gone, or a windstorm blew a tree over and smashed our roof?” We’re always relieved to pull into the driveway and see our house still intact.
Most of us like the major contours of our life to be settled. We want our homes to last, our jobs to be secure, our paychecks to be steady, and our relationships to be reliable. We don’t want to have our life turned upside down. We want the major pieces of our life to be fairly predictable, including religious matters. We Christians hope for stability in the church. Little surprises are ok, but please, O God, spare us from the big surprises. Let things be done decently and in order. We just don’t like it when our religious world is upended.