Just Around the Corner Stands God

I've always thought I liked change.  I'm reconsidering.

I have reconsidered.  I don't like it at all.  Change always looks so exciting when it is on the far horizon, and then it gets up close.  And then it is scary.

Do you realize how many phrases we have that reference change?

• just around the corner
• over the hill
• just around the bend
• over on the other side
• standing at the crossroads
• time stops for no man
• turning over a new leaf

Do you notice that some of them have good connotations and some of them bad?

Anne of Green Gables always looked at the bend in the road with such eagerness and anticipation, reminding herself that just ahead lay "a new day with no mistakes in it."  I would like to be more like Anne sometimes.

More than an optimistic adage or the foolhardy notion that change would always bring improvement, her attitude toward the future signaled faith.  You see, I always imagine something beautiful on that far-off horizon, something ideal.  I always imagine.  And then I get to to the turn in the road, and it is just an ordinary turn in the road.  Yes, I am older and wiser.  I have been blessed on this stretch of road.  But it is still just a dirt road, and I am still just me.

Even though I know I can hear God calling me from around the bend-- even though I know that He stands beyond the bend say, "Come, dance with me.  Find joy in the plan I have for you," still I cling to the familiar things.  I mourn the things that I cannot take with me around the bend.  And I, recalcitrant and foolish, say to the One who loves me:  "I only just realized why you put me here!  And now I must--I must continue onto another path?"  At this close range, it is difficult to imagine what might lie ahead.  The one thing certain is that it is not rosy ideal painted by my imagination when I was beginning.  It is reality painted in the mind of God before the beginning (Eph. 1:4-10 ESV).

So I must have faith and take His hand when I cannot see the way ahead . . . .

Stepping Outside the Box

Have you ever heard the analogy for male and female brains that compares the first to a waffle and the second to spaghetti? (Bill and Pam Farrel)  While it is not an absolute rule, I find myself fitting this generalization most of the time.  My brain runs around bushes and makes connections everywhere (which I may or may not state aloud).  One friend generously denoted my writing style as "webby" when contrasting it to his own fluid and linear prose.  Yet I also feel the tug of boxes in particular situations, especially when dealing with people or ideas that I do not understand.

It would be so reassuring if we could put everything into nice, little boxes--neatly labeled, of course--and not really have to deal with the questions or pain or knowledge of our own ignorance attached to them.  But we cannot.

I am reminded way too often that people just do not fit inside the cool boxes I diligently prepare for them.  They may disappoint me in one area but then they will soar above my expectations in another area until I finally despair of ever making a box that really fits well.

Yet I persist in making boxes . . . .

I have tried making a box for God.  I have even tried making a box for myself!  Neither of these ideas worked very well.  The first failed because God is bigger than any box that I can build in my finite humanity.  If He is bigger than all of spake and time, He most certainly will be bigger than any concept I could design.

Likewise, His will for my life will not fit in any box of expectations that I might have created.  God's imagination is infinitely superior to mine, and He can create situations that I would never have thought possible.  I find, though, that my desire to fit everything into a nice little understandable box is in direct conflict with the joy I find in surprises and in being unconventional.  I prize being a unique individual created by God for a very specific purpose, yet I balk at His creative sense of timing and direction in my life.  Perhaps He could work through me more effectively if I were cooperative and stepped outside the box willingly rather than leaving Him to strip my expectations of His plan from me one by one . . . . (Matt. 14:26-31 ESV)