Futility

Today I am thinking about futility.

Life is so stinking futile. It seems as though everything in creation leads to no where.

If you are still here, if you haven't left this post because of my negative first words, good. Good for you because I am not going to be negative from this point forward. You are in for a tasty treat.

I have a good friend who likes to lament about how futile life is. What was that? He likes to lament, about futility? Stream, I thought you said you weren't going to be negative in this post. I am not being negative. Thinking about futility draws me closer to God. My friend in his lamenting always points his heart in God's direction...always. I like to hear him lament. It is like reading, or hearing, and Psalm in modern day context. My friend has taught me a lot about futility, lamenting, and living under God's sovereign control. If Jesus is really LORD, then nothing is futile because all futile things of this earth point to God. Or else I am a lost and hopeless soul, for sure!

Is it possible that futility is an act of God? Of His mercy? Without feelings of futility would my heart not turn to him? Is futility itself a means of God to force my wandering heart into submission to his divine will.

Romans 8:20-21, NIV
(20)For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope (21) that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.

God, through futility protects me from the things I sometimes pray for that would destroy me. In his love, God, slows me from obtaining what I think I want and worse yet think I need. My attempts at happiness and meaning, which by nature are independent of God, lead to bondage and death. God, with his grace, saves me - he uses futility to do it.

Futility is an act of God's love in that it restrains me from ruining my life (and others) by my own free will.