Puzzling on Ferocious Caring

 "Because God is great in strength, mighty in power, not one is missing."

                                                                                                                                    - Isaiah 40:26

It was a gift, and it was whole when I opened it on Christmas morning. Now it's in a heap of about ten pieces on our coffee table in the living room. I can't fix it because I don't know how to put it back together. Nobody knows how to reassemble it, at least not yet. It's a brainteaser puzzle, and for now it has me stumped. I'll figure it out eventually.

I'm a bit of a puzzle junkie: escape room outings with family and friends, jigsaws, sudoku, crosswords, most recently obsessing over the NY Times Spelling Bee, a game where you form as many words as possible using seven letters, with all words containing the letter in the middle. I'm apparently weirdly wired enough that on longer drives I engage in "license plate math," a practice of shuffling, adding, multiplying, and otherwise manipulating letters and numbers to pass the time.

I feel a sense of accomplishment when I find a puzzle's solution, but I think there's a deeper dynamic at play. The process of taking steps and making moves that lead to subsequent discoveries has its own allure, the draw of disclosure being at least as strong as the hope for a finish. Arthur Ashe, tennis legend and civil rights leader, is credited with saying, "The doing is often more important than the outcome." This truth holds with most if not all of our strivings and problem-solving, certainly including the pursuit of equality, justice, and harmony. 

Isaiah drops an enigma on us in the half-verse cited above, one utterly worthy of our efforts toward understanding. For those like me wondering about the nature of God, the prophet reveals this seemingly odd couple of traits. God is laser-focused in adoration for all that exists precisely because God is awesome. Flip it around and it doesn't lose much meaning: the incomprehensible force of God's essence, the pulsing energy at the diving core is absurdly strong as it touches you and me as Love, a ferocious caring.

For those of us who feel gut-punched by headlines about innocents perishing in too many places or a depressing political landscape, it is actually refreshing to be reminded that these things are no final answer. Yes, there will be more news that is not welcome - but our deepest truth working its way into consciousness is the prophet's note: "not one is missing." Every daughter and son beloved, follicles of hair known like landmarks on a map, those who have choked on misery are held close, nourished and nurtured. 

Yes, there are powers-that-be which just reek, but they are temporary, and divine power is rooted and fruiting in a timeless and boundless loving. It may be mysterious, even puzzling, but it is indomitable and unfolding even now. I may never fully understand it, but I pray that it reveal itself through me and my "doing."