Psalm 55.22 Cast your cares on the Lord and he will
sustain you; he will never let the righteous be shaken. (NIV)
There once was a time when I thought I was considerably
smarter than I am today – ah, youth! There also once was a time when I used brainiac
words like fractal and thought that just by dropping them into a conversation
at the opportune moment others would be in awe of my intellect and brain
capacity. There once was a time when I would use a word like fractal as if it
was my own and I invented it… there once was a time.
This morning, a partly sunny, cool morning here in the
climes of NE Oregon, I think about fractals differently, and I saw a fractal
today right here in good old Psalm 55. I say I think differently because
fractals are not because I think I know about them or can use words like
fractal and fractals, as intellectual currency – fractals existed long before I
did, yea, long before the world or the universe was formed – fractals existed
in the mind and heart of God and I get to share in them: they are His gift to
those who’ll look for them and appreciate them.
"The term
"fractal" was first used by mathematician Benoît Mandelbrot in 1975.
Mandelbrot based it on the Latin frāctus meaning "broken" or
"fractured", and used it to extend the concept of theoretical
fractional dimensions to geometric patterns in nature." – quoth Wikipeadia…
I think it would be something like dropping a ceramic plate and having it break
into pieces that all look the same.
Today, I saw the above verse tucked into the poetry of
David, Cast your cares on the Lord and he
will sustain you; he will never let the righteous be shaken. The fractal of
this verse appears again in 1 Peter 5:7: Casting
all your care upon him; for he careth for you. (KJV) David knew it; Peter
knew it. It’s now up to you and me to know it and do it: we’re to cast all of
our cares, concerns, questions, and confounds upon Him – that is upon God –
because it is His nature to care about us. Each one of us and infinitely
repeatably us. Fractally. Somebody up there likes us.
And I can try to create beautiful words or creative words
to talk about fractals but it really doesn’t matter because fractals are what
they are, and God loves me regardless of fractals – He loves me because it is
His nature to love me: Infinitely. Repeatably. Fractally.
I have cares. Not only do I care about some of the others
around me, but I also have cares about me – I’m concerned about stuff. Concern about stuff is human – we all do
it. But knowing that Someone cares about us in the midst of our cares seems to
make a difference in our lives and how much we care about things we care about.
Care is a modern word much like love – we haven’t the foggiest what it
really means. But there are indicators of both. But in the present
conversation, care means anxiety and we all know what that means: worrying about stuff we have
no control over and forgetting to take care of stuff we do have control over. Saints, preserve us! We’re funny creatures
trying so desperately to carve out our niche in the world.
We’re good at attempting to carve out granite holes with
plastic chisels – it doesn’t work.
What does work
is casting our cares on the Lord, for He sustains those who do, and keeps them
from being shaken by stuff they have absolutely no control over. The miracle
and the gift of all this is He is right there with us in the midst, and keeps
us, when we cast cares upon Him, free from anxiety over things that ought not
bother us.
Lord, this day, I cast all my cares upon You because You
care for me! Amen.
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