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)

On the Mountain Top

Perhaps it is God's plan to make me strong and use me for some great work or perhaps it is merely that I have been a slow learner and proven stubborn when learning the simplest lessons of life, but for some reason most of my life has been an uphill climb.

Taken by Alan Carillo, at the top of Mount Kenya

This past year has been a mountain top for me.  I discovered love!  God's love, how to love other people even when they don't care a whit about you (through His love), and the joys of faithful friendship . . .  Love is a wonderful thing.  It is to be the core of our being, the one thing that consistently identifies us as Christians (John 13:35).  And yet we fail at love all the time--or at least I do . . . .

The heights came into view when I realized that God loved me not only enough to save me, but also enough to have my best interest at heart in every detail of His plan for my life.  I did not have to earn a good life any more than I had to earn eternal salvation.  God wanted to give it to me.  The amazing comfort of such great love has enfolded me ever since.  It protects me from the opinions and actions of others, giving me the strength to love them when they need it the most, despite my own fearful heart.

But those failings . . . oh, they hurt!  Love is not a simple matter.  The apostle Paul, in four verses of his letter to the Corinthians, presented each of us with a lifelong challenge (I Cor. 4-7).  These virtues do not come easily, even to those of us who have Christ as our perfect model.  The world lacks models of true love and, in fact, do not even have a proper definition of love for others.  Self-love and idolatry and lust and numerous other harmful perversions of love reign in the cultural consciousness of our day.  Everyone is seeking love, but no one even knows where to look.  Modern love is a phantom.  It appears one day, unexplained, and vanishes again as quickly as it came.

But I discovered something on the mountain top.  On the mountain top, I found a cross.  Jesus said, "If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me." (Lk. 9:23)  After listening to Dr. Carlson (refer to my last post), I realized that the world lacks a true definition of love and that Christians must find a way to teach them.  I must find a way to show them the love of Christ and how it shapes human love.  Then I was reading God at Work, by Dr. Gene Edward Veith, and he spoke of the cross as a daily component of our vocations.  Suddenly, I realized that my elation at reaching the mountain top had distracted me from the cross I found at the top.

Exulting in loving the lovable and in being loved by them, I have been distracted from Love's cross.  I must learn to love the unlovely and show them the unconditional love of Christ, while ever increasing in love for those already dear to me.  That is Love's cross, the cross I found on the mountain top of God's grace.