Last week, the day I didn't post a blog, I visited, again, my friend who is in prison.  As always, it was good to see him.  He is doing well and doing many good things in prison. One of the most beautiful things he is doing is hospice care.  For nearly three years, he has been caring for an inmate who, though he was expected to die at the end of 2011, seems to keep going.  He bathes him, dresses him, changes him, and anything else that this inmate requires.  It is a difficult but rewarding job.  And my friend genuinely enjoys and appreciates doing it.  Even though he is incarcerated (and will be for some time to come), he is contributing, in a small way, to humanity's well being.  With a passion for service, my friend is giving of himself in an place largely inhabited by people who for one reason or another have not.
     Why does my friend give of himself so graciously?  "It's what God wants me to do," he tells me.  "I believe it is my calling."
     Midway through his letter to the church at Rome, the apostle Paul writes that, "God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God and are called according to his purpose."  These are weighty words and elude easy interpretation.  In a ways, they raise more issues than they resolve.  Their central idea, however, is that for people who have committed themselves to God through Jesus Christ, though they may make poor decisions, though they may encounter immense disaster and pain, though they may wander far from God's ways, they remain in the center of God's will.  God will continue to work in them, he will continue to use them.  He will continue to be with them.
     On the one hand, this seems insuperably difficult to understand.  Too many Christians have made horrifically poor choices over the multiple centuries of the Church's existence. Why would God still be with them?  Why would God continue to use them?
     This side of eternity, we'll never resolve these questions fully.  As Deuteronomy 29:29 observes, "The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our offspring forever, that we may observe all the words of this law."  We can only act on what we know; we're powerless to act on what we do not.  God has revealed to my friend what he needs to do at this stage of his life.  But that's all he has shown him. And that's all he will show us.  As Paul notes in his first letter to the church at Corinth, "We walk as in a riddle."
     As we confront the great mysteries of existence, mysteries we may never unravel fully, we bear this in mind.  We cannot divine God's full purpose, and we cannot fathom our total journey.  Like my friend, every human being is called only to be faithful, right here, right now, nothing more, nothing less, to bury him or herself in trusting belief, confident in the secrets of God.