Blessed Be the Name of the Lord

So I got my CD player jacked out of my car this afternoon. Probably not what you expected to read after taking in my post title. Understandable...but I'll get there.

I walked out of Wal-Mart after my 3 pm - 11pm shift...wait, scratch that. I walked out at 11:35. It's funny when you think about it...if I clock in at eight minutes after three o'clock, I get a citation on my file. If they keep me a half hour late, though, that's no big deal. I guess I forget that my time is worth bunk compared to everyone else's.

Anyway...I walk up to my car, and I notice that my one inch ventilation crack has turned into a gaping five inch opening. Then I notice smudged fingerprints on the top of the window, right before seeing the crater in my dashboard. Now, first off, the schmucks cheated and used a screwdriver. I spent over four hours over the course of two days putting that player in, and by George, that sucker was in there tight. I remember saying to myself, "Self, the only way anybody's getting that sucker out is tearing out the dashboard." Well, I jinxed myself, because they did. It was a nice player, too. Sony CD-MPX40, blue LCD screen, 210 watts with ID3 tag reader and mp3 capability. Probably getting pawned as I write. Complete with my Jimmy Eat World CD inside.

So after filing a report with a surprisingly half-interested police officer and a security guard who admitted that mine was the second burgulary committed on his watch today, I started my first drive home in a long while unaccompanied by Chevelle, Jimmy Eat World, Yellowcard, or something similar. And as I drove in silence (actually, as I drove and talked to myself, but that's assuredly going to come up later), I started thinking. As I was in our biweekly chapel service at college today, the worship leader told us the story of how he went to the funeral of his friend's mother, and saw the most amazing thing: toward the end of the service, his friend slowly stood, walked to the front of the sanctuary, and sang "Blessed Be Your Name." For the probably most of you who don't know how the song goes:

Blessed Be Your Name / In the land that is plentiful
Where Your streams of abundance flow / Blessed be Your name
Blessed Be Your name / When I'm found in the desert place
Though I walk through the wilderness / Blessed Be Your name

Every blessing You pour out I'll / turn back to praise
When the darkness closes in, Lord / Still I will say
Blessed be the name of the Lord / Blessed be Your name
Blessed be the name of the Lord / Blessed be Your glorious name

Blessed be Your name / When the sun's shining down on me
When the world's 'all as it should be' / Blessed be Your name
Blessed be Your name / On the road marked with suffering
Though there's pain in the offering / Blessed be Your name

(Bridge) / (Chorus 2x)

You give and take away / You give and take away
My heart will choose to say / Lord, blessed be Your name

This is no morbid dirge. This song is up tempo - 123 tempo in 4/4 time. I remember thinking at the time, what a thought. To be standing within feet of your lifeless mother, lying chilly in a casket, and singing such a sincere, loving praise to God. What faith. All of this flashed through my mind, and then I looked at the crater in my dashboard, and I laughed.

You know what? If that friend of a friend of mine can summon the strength to give praise to God in the face of so much real tragedy, what am I to do in the loss of my preh-shush CD player? Should I spit on the rather ineffective security guy circling the Wal-Mart parking lot? Should I whine to the police officer when he tells me that he can't call out a crime unit for a $200 CD player and one maybe-usable print? Should I curse God for His injustice?

"While he was still speaking, another also came and said, "Your sons and your daughters were eating and drinking wine in their oldest brother's house, and behold, a great wind came from across the wilderness and struck the four corners of the house, and it fell on the young people and they died, and I alone have escaped to tell you." Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head, and he fell to the ground and worshiped. He said, "Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I shall return there. The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away. Blessed be the name of the LORD." Through all this Job did not sin nor did he blame God." Job 1:18-22

I've got tons to be thankful for...and it's not even November. I've got a beautiful wife who loves me, a steady job, a solid college career, a loving family, a host of friends who would be here in a second if they knew I needed them, and a litany of other things I could cram Google's servers with. I say this with humility, certain in my knowledge that you, sitting before your own glass screen, may not have as much as I do - but I would like to think that I've got my priorities straight.

And do I think that God tapped someone with nothing better to do on the shoulder and told him or her to pluck my CD player out of my dashboard? Of course not. I'm still developing my theology on the tension between human free agency and divine providence, but I'm not so naive as to think that God targeted me because of something I did (some people have an element of karma in their Christian theology, reasoning that bad things in their lives must have come from bad things they have done, which isn't necessarily true). Things happen...life is a dynamic flow of events. Some we label as positive, some we label as negative, and some we shrug at and label as, "Oh, well." I choose to shrug. And if you happen to have let yourself into a red 1990 Cavalier in Oklahoma City today and helped yourself to my CD player, I forgive you. My only regret is not having a Christian CD in the player so that you might hear the message of hope that has fundamentally changed my life. Pawn it off and feed your family for a couple of weeks. I pray you might find the Hope I have found.

"You give and take away...You give and take away..."