details...

I LOVE for details. Rhinestones in floral bouquets, hints of rosemary in lemonade, the moments right before kiss. Sparkles, scents, and seconds proceeding are almost as important the thing they are highlighting. Yes, I believe minutia is as important as main events! 

Before you stop reading and disregard me as neurotic, let me inform you that I stand in good company. God cares about details too! He's involved with the minutia of our day and He cares?! As creator of beings, He has sovereignly worked out every detail of life, liberty and the pursuit of love. Ravi Zacharias says in The Grand Weaver, "Your DNA matters because the essence of who you are matters... He [God] created every feature and personality quirk. Consider it God's sovereign imprint on you." 

Zacharias retells a story of a US Navy officer following the Second World War who was in the USS Astoria that was badly hit by a Japanese vessel and sank the next day:

       About 0200 hours a young 3rd Class officer, Elgin Staples, was swept overboard by the blast when the Astoria's number one eight-inch gun turret exploded. Wounded in both legs by shrapnel and semi-shock he was kept afloat by a narrow lifebelt that he managed to activate with a simple trigger mechanism. 

       At around 0600 hours, Staples was rescued by a passing destroyer and returned to the Astoria, whose captain was attempting to save the cruiser by beaching her. The effort failed, and Staples, still wearing the same lifebelt, found himself back in the water. It was lunchtime. Picked up again, this time by the USS President Jackson, he was one of 500 survivors of the battle who were evacuated to Noumea. On board the transport, Staples hugging that lifebelt with gratitude, looked at that small piece of equipment for the first time. He scrutinized every stitch of the lifebelt that had served him so well. It had been manufactured by Firestone Tire and Rubber Company of Akron, Ohio, and bore a registration number.

       Given home leave, Staples told his story and asked his mother, who worked for Firestone, about the purpose of the number on the belt. She replied that the company insisted on personal responsibility for the war effort, and that the number was unique and assigned to only one inspector. Staples remembered everything about the lifebelt, and quoted the number. There was a moment of stunned silence in the room and then his mother spoke, "That was my personal code that I affixed to every item I was responsible for approving."

I would've given anything to have seen the exchange Elgin Staples and his mother! In the theater of my mind I can see the emotion that she must have felt knowing that she played a role in the saving of her son. The woman who gave him life, saved his life. If an earthly parent playing the role of procreation can provide a means of rescue without knowing when and for whom that belt would come into play, how much more can the God of all creation accomplish? By His sovereign will, we have come into being with an expressed and designed and DETAILED purpose. Jeremiah 29:11, I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans of good and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. 

Now if you'll excuse me I need to go kiss my mother who STILL to this day places emergency water in my room, an earthquake preparation kit in my car, and insists that I lock my car doors. She, like GOD, cares about the minutia of my day...