Sonnet Sunday 59: Goldberged

This is another one of those sonnets that I’m publishing less because it’s just that good, but more because it’s the right time for me to publish it.

This last week has been another chaos vortex. On Wednesday, my car was declared a total loss (frame damage, basically), the net result of which is a brand-new 2018 model of the same vehicle, plus another 4-year loan. (I knew I was going to go back into car and/or house debt eventually; I had just hoped it wouldn’t be this soon.)

After  buying my new car followed a fun afternoon that ended with extreme sensory overload, I sat down to finish the sonnet I intended to publish last week. All I had to finish was the image, but I kept having upload issues. Eventually I gave up and laid down for a nap, and a grumpy little prayer. “Okay, God,” I said. “Maybe there’s a different sonnet I’m supposed to publish this week. But you’re basically going to have to drop it into my lap.”

And as I dozed, I dreamed of marbles, and woke up and remembered this poem.

Actually, I think I thought about it earlier today, but mentally rejected it as a little nonsensical. I wrote it back in April during a sermon. The dream, then, was more God giving me a nudge that, no really, I needed to revisit the poem. And I think I needed to revisit it because of the sermon notes. I’ve attached a photo of the first spread below.

Can you read my chicken scratch? The sermon that morning was about how we need to trust Jesus to make order out of our chaos.

Yeah. I needed that.

If you want a poetical interpretation of this that is expressed, if not “better,” then at least less weirdly, Jason Gray has a great song called “Nothing is Wasted.” But it’s true. I have no idea why God in his infinite wisdom chose to kill the car I had planned on driving for another 100,000 miles. But I do see His blessings in it, even though I have to take on debt again. “All I have needed, Thy hand hath provided,” and that goes for transportation as well. And I look forward to one day seeing in eternity what eternal roles my continuing car sagas are playing, and how they are being woven together into God’s grand tapestry.

Because it is chaos. But it’s chaos under God’s control.

Goldberged

Originally written April 8, 2018

The world is just a Rube Goldberg machine,
With twirling gears and levers bumped and pulled,
And buttons pushed, and hourglasses filled:
So many factors that cannot be seen.
For every circumstance is just a cog
That grinds against another, makes it spin,
Which in its turn will turn another, then
The chain reactions fell us like a log
And knock us, tumbling, through so many pins
And we set off so many other gears.
And so it has gone on throughout the years:
We set everything off through works and sins,
This strange and spirit-filled machinery
Still moves us onward to our destiny.

Photo by Chester Alvarez on Unsplash