There Is A Cause

“As the bird by wandering, as the swallow by flying, so the curse causeless shall not come.” (Pr 26:2 AV)

There is a reason for everything.  There is no such thing as random.  Science teaches us the principle of cause and effect.  If a feather floats by, it is there because a bird shed it and the wind carries it.  All events can be traced back to one single event called creation.  There is no such thing as fate.  Time and chance happen to us all, but the writer was referring to God’s sovereignty and not random events without a cause.  In particular, bad things happen because something caused them to happen.  We look at blessings that way.  We see what caused them to be.  When it comes to bad things happening, we fail to see they happen because somethings caused them to happen.  We think they are random because we do not want to see our part in what caused them to happen.  Even if we suffer at the hands of another, we made some choice that put us in that position to suffer that trial.  It could be a choice of obedience.  It could be the choice of faith.  Regardless, the curse was not merely the cause of result of random acts.

The above example is a wandering bird of flying swallow.  There is a reason they are flying.  The swallow seems to fly randomly because he is hunting mosquitoes in the air.  We cannot see them, so it looks like random flying.  Outside of migratory birds who fly in a certain direction and pattern, birds seem to fly at random. While living in Kentucky, I noticed a type of bird that flies in swarms.  It is so cool to see them fly.  There seems to be no rhyme of reason to their swam behavior.  That is, until you learn that eagles and hawks are in the area.  They fly like that so that predatory birds cannot pick off on single bird.  It protects the whole flock.  One would think it takes a whole lot of efforts to travel a small distance as they do in a swarm.  But it protects the whole.  The point being, what appears to be random is not random at all.

We are not complete victims of our life’s events.  The other night, my wife and I were watching some crime shows.  There were several crimes presented as though the victim had not culpability whatsoever. However, some poor choices led to them being in the position of becoming a victim.  It is similar to our present living condition.  We live in a large city.  There was a night in the past when both my wife and I forgot to check our doors before we retired for the night.  One was left unlocked.  If someone had come in and robbed us, we would have been violated.  Leaving a door unlocked doesn’t deserve a violation of one’s property. We wouldn’t be due the crime simply because of negligence.  If we had be robbed, and the perp caught, he would have gone to jail.  However, the insurance company would have raised our rates because we were not prudent.  This is the meaning of our proverb above. We cannot assume that all which happens to us is random.  We need to look at what led to it and learn from it. Or, we are destined to experience the same thing over and again.