My old teachers always appeared to be more sticklers for margins than content. On the old manual typewriters the left margin could be set, but the right side was at risk. Handwritten work required even more diligence to keep the words in the nice rectangle necessary to please my teachers’ hawk-like eyes. Yet, often I would test their vision and their trusty rulers. In this digital age, where a few clicks can adjust the margins of a page, we tend to do the same with our lives, pressing the confines of the clock and calendar.

We plan, schedule, and push our margins out farther and farther trying to make the most of time. In doing so, we begin to leave little space for the unexpected or the unplanned, and stress begins to build; Stress, then manifests itself with a general feeling of being overwhelmed, in irritability, anxiety, fast food eating, poor sleep habits, little time for exercise, lower quality in relationships, and our over-scheduling may lead to hasty dice-roll decisions.

In antiquity, casting lots was a common Hebrew practice for important decisions. Proverbs 18:18 suggested that the lot was used not in haste, but when satisfaction would result in either decision. “The cast lot puts an end to strife. And decides between the mighty ones.” The dice, or lots, in Biblical times could have been pieces of bone, wood or stones with markings on them, these were thrown down, or cast, then someone would read and interpret the meaning of the symbols which resulted. The Roman soldiers even cast lots to decide who would receive the garments of Jesus, as he hung from the cross above them.

After the resurrection, the remaining disciples were at a crossroads. They had been given the knowledge possessed by Jesus and directed to continue his mission. Jesus had taught them, and had prayed to the Father for their protection, “I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one. They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.”

The eleven were empowered with knowledge and the Spirit, but the stressful demands and scope of their mission suggested that the task would require the addition of another apostle. Jesus had chosen twelve, then twelve were necessary. They evidently had standards for the replacement, “one of the men who have accompanied us during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John until the day when he was taken up from us– one of these must become a witness with us to his resurrection.”

Focused and prayer-filled they chose two men who fit those criteria for the position left open by Judas. Their final choice, under the supervision of Peter, came down to something no more deliberate than a roll of dice. They had prayed for guidance in the choice, and fully believed that G_d would cause the lots to reveal the appropriate person to continue the Gospel of Christ. The lot fell upon Saint Matthias. Yet from that day forward the Twelve were Spirit driven, as this was the last time casting lots was referenced in their decisions toward their mission. Jesus had also prayed for the Apostle’s unity, “So that they may be one, as we are one.”

The Son of G_d’s prayer for unity also serves as a mandate for the unity of our lives. It really does require us to seek and build lives of balance, balance of our time and talent, because division and stress contradicts the will of Christ. Christ has prayed for their protection, for our protection. As in their lives, Jesus has also become our life and salvation, our joy and hope. Our hope for unity lies not in our own best efforts to stretch our margins and to roll the dice, but simply in the content of our lives, in prayerfully doing the Lord’s will and loving one another.

Pax,
jbt