I have my moments. When I can operate in the middle of the fray, regardless of the chaos happening around me, just keep piling and not even slow down. But these moments are few. Generally, I need a clean desk.

I don’t think this is a compulsive tendency. I think it’s more of a visual thing. My eye wanders to the space around what I am doing and, just for a moment, thinks about the cards to write, the bills to pay, the books to read…well I could go on and on. Because all of those things need ordering. And disorder distracts me.

The odd thing is, some disorder I like. The kind that I can see the order in. And if I can be an agent in  the ordering, it feels right. These are small things – like junior jumbles. I do them occasionally in the Sunday comics. Small words with letters that are scrambled/jumbled that you rearrange to spell a word. The circled letters can be unscrambled to solve a puzzle. Okay, yeah in the junior jumble there are so many clues in the cartoon that you don’t need to unscramble the letters, but I do anyway. Gives me a sense of accomplishment.

This doesn’t feel like solving, exactly. It’s not really a mental exercise, more of a gestalt experience.   A sort of, “make right this word.” I don’t know how I enter into this process, don’t know how I activate it, don’t even know how it moves along to completion. I just know that it draws me in and then makes itself known.

And when order has been re-established, all feels right again. Nothing to feel “proud of,” because nothing has been accomplished. Just righted.

Yesterday, I read a devotional piece that was offered for “those waiting anxiously for God’s answer.” The author was speaking to people in hard circumstances, inclining the reader to “be the answer to someone’s prayer.” All I could think was, God has already answered in Christ. The hard part is the waiting in the middle.

I wonder if that is who we are for those in need, the ones waiting for an answer. Perhaps we give them hope that God’s answer is on its way, still coming, in process. That God’s order is in the works and, in fact, has already come to pass.

For now we are just in the flow of God’s answering, the Advent of God. The order is there, underneath the season. Not to be solved for, exactly, but to be found. Once placed, we will know the answer to the puzzle that has eluded us. It will be a perfect fit.

You know how it feels when you see it? You take in a big breath and smile and say, “Of course. So simple. How could it be anything else?”