A Well-Ordered Life

(Click on pictures to enlarge)

The city of Funchal is getting another facelift. Over the past few years, many of the narrow streets of the city center have been closed to traffic and reserved for pedestrians, and this summer, two blocks of one side of the central avenue have been transformed into a pedestrian mall. Patiently, the workmen sit or squat, and some of them take the black basalt rock or white limestone rock and break them into "cubes"; other workers set the cubes one by one into the base of sand that's been prepared; finally, cement is spread over the top of the rockwork and allowed to settle in the cracks before the excess is cleaned off. The result is the typical Portuguese mosaic sidewalks.

What began as piles of sand and rocks eventually becomes a well-ordered pattern. Here, the designs are linear, but there's no limiting the possibilities. Flower motifs, designs of ships, circular patterns, wave-like formations, checkerboards ... there's a little bit of everything around town. Someone knew beforehand what the pattern was going to look like in the end, and that someone told the workmen how to set the black rocks and the white rocks so they would come out that way. The stones are not set by chance, but according to rulers and pattern molds.

It's a struggle to keep the affairs of life in order. I have a Palm PDA to help me keep my appointments in order. Of course, 1) I have to remember to enter my tasks and appointments into the PDA, AND.... 2) I have to remember to check it to see if there's something I'm supposed to remember. I used to always carry a small notebook and a fistfull of papers in my pocket to remind me of such things, but on the whole, it never was an efficient system. Using the PDA does seem to be an improvement, but I still have two steps to take that are my responsibility. That's plenty!


No sooner had I returned from our trip to the US, than the requests for translations started pouring in. Chaos is creeping up on me...so many jobs, so many deadlines, so many degrees of urgency. Fortunately, above and beyond all this, there is order in the universe. Beyond the apparent chaotic conditions of the present storm, there is an over-arching goal, a final destination of this voyage. There is One who knows how to take the chaotic piles of black rocks and white rocks, the experiences of life, good and bad, and set them one by one into a pattern of His choosing.


One thing about the way the Portuguese make their sidewalks: it's labor-intensive. Think about covering an area the size of a football field, one little rock at a time. Sure, it would be quicker to bring in the ready-mix cement trucks and pour an acre of concrete slab, but it wouldn't be nearly as beautiful, would it? I guess God could "pour a slab" in my life and dispense with my daily struggles with bearing the cross, but the end result wouldn't be nearly as beautiful. I get in a hurry sometimes, but it's best to let Him pattern my life, one painful/joyful experience at a time, setting them in line with His ruler and His molds.