Contemplative Bible Reading

Deuteronomy 28:20 (New International Version 2011)

The LORD will send on you curses, confusion and rebuke in everything you put your hand to, until you are destroyed and come to sudden ruin because of the evil you have done in forsaking him.

I work as an engineer and a manager of engineering projects. In these projects, we must have every little detail correct or the plane won’t fly or the car won’t run and so on. Projects involve people – dozens of people. All these people need to understand their part and how their part fits into the whole system.

Confusion is a curse.

When I read this verse, I felt as if life would be one continuous bad dream. I have bad dreams often. The worst of the bad dreams are about confusing situations where nothing works. Such is the life of an organized engineer.

Personal quirks aside, confusion can cripple a nation. People talk with one another, and no one seems to know what they are to do. Farmers and marketers don’t understand each others’ condition, so they squabble weekly and food production dwindles. Water stops flowing; walls crumble, and everyone spends their day trying to fix something that worked yesterday. Things that seem to work, things to ought to work, well, they don’t work.

Confusion is a curse.

Lord, grant me the blessing order in my life.