The Best Laid Plans

In 1786, the Scot poet Robert Burns turned up a mouse’s nest while plowing a field. He wrote a poetic apology to the mouse:

“But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane [you aren't alone]


In proving foresight may be vain:


The best laid schemes o' mice an' men


Gang aft a-gley, [often go awry] 


An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,


For promised joy.”

How often that feels true to me! I make plans, considering all sorts of details, and then find that I have to reconsider it all because of some unforeseen circumstance. I do find a big difference in how I handle those unforeseen circumstances now than in the past. Part of that difference comes from having more experience. Part of it comes from making a choice to think more about things than simply react. Of course, I don’t do this perfectly by any means. I can still come close to blowing a gasket--at least it feels that way at times.

The Teacher in Ecclesiastes considers all he has done and finds that it is vanity—a chasing after the wind. Sometimes it does feel like that. All my plans are for naught, especially if I make them thinking that it must happen as I engineer it. That would be vanity, a chasing after the wind.

I don’t believe that God throws a monkey wrench into the plans I make, but I do think that when I have to step back and reconsider the situation, I can often find a deeper sense of God’s presence, and a new way to view what I consider to be an inconvenience. This happens in small situations where a plan to get a ride falls through. It happens in a much larger arena as I still work on re-thinking what my life is going to be like without my partner. Even in the midst of loss and pain, in God’s presence, I can find joy.

Ecclesiastes 3:1

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.

Taking Time to Discern

I have tended to have a rule of thumb about making purchases, though I confess it’s harder, though not impossible, to keep when shopping online. When I have seen something that catches my eye, I often won’t purchase it right away, unless it’s for something that has a deadline—not the item, but what it’s for. I might even go back to see it several times. If it’s not there, then that seals the decision that I won’t buy it. More often than not, I decide not to buy it. It’s part of a discernment process. It’s when I haven’t followed that rule of thumb that I tend to have regrets about making a purchase.

I have a similar discernment style about other decisions as well. I begin to sense a call about something. I have to mull it over, come back to it several times, before I can get a really clear view of what I should do. Sometimes the decision is taken out of my hands because an opportunity has passed by before I acted on it, and that is generally okay. Perhaps it becomes the road not taken, but the road I do take seems richer for the time that was spent waiting.

This week I had a conversation with someone who senses a call that he or she wants to answer, and yet at the same time finds herself or himself apparently reluctant to embrace the call fully. The time spent waiting could be seen as trying to avoid the risk of a new venture. That time could also be seen as weighing the call, allowing it to define itself more fully.

I believe strongly that there can be multiple good roads to take, calls to answer, and that God’s blessings can work through whichever one is taken. That is something for which to be thankful.

Proverbs 1:5-6

Let the wise also hear and gain in learning, and the discerning acquire skill, to understand a proverb and a figure, the words of the wise and their riddles.

One Thing Amid Distractions

Today on my walk I reflected on Monday’s walk and how I became distracted from my purposeful stride, stopping at least twice for conversation, making me late for the rest of the day's work. Sometimes my life gets really full and I need to be reminded of what Jesus told Martha—that she was distracted by many things, and that Mary, in sitting at his feet, had chosen the better part, to be single of focus, to be mindful of the one thing that is needed. This brings peace and lightness to me as I imagine myself in Mary’s place, not distracted by the many things in the way.

Just before Jesus came to Martha’s house, he told a story in answer to a lawyer’s question about who was his neighbor. Robbers fall upon a man traveling the road to Jericho from Jerusalem. The man is beaten and left half dead on the road. Two men, a priest and a Levite, passed him by. A Samaritan helped him. Anyone traveling this road needed to be alert and aware, mindful, for it was dangerous as the first man found out. The priest and Levite were each mindful; they had duties in and around the Temple for which they needed to be ritually clean. Helping the victim would have distracted them from their purpose for traveling, and so they passed by. The Samaritan had to have a purpose for traveling that dangerous road, and so he was needful and mindful as well, but as he came upon the victim, he did not pass by but took time and effort to help.

Ah, to sit at Jesus’ feet and look upon his face in rapt attention, this is what I need. I look into his eyes, and there I see myself reflected, but as I look more closely, I see others reflected there as well. In sitting with Jesus, I find that I am called to be in relationship with those I see there. The priest and the Levite were needful of one thing, and they weren’t distracted from their purpose, leaving a man wounded. The Samaritan enlarged his singular gaze to see and help the wounded man. My conversational “distractions” on Monday allowed me to see people who were reflected in Jesus’ eyes and become aware of their wounds and need for care. I was able to continue on my journey--my walk—offering them into God’s care for healing and wholeness, and to look even more deeply in Jesus’ eyes and find peace.

Luke 10:41-42

But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”

What It Is All About

Oh, how easy it is to be sucked into the vortex of anxiety. The closer the election came, the harder it was to remember to live the words I had written. All the hype--the FaceBook postings, the phone calls, the mailings—were each annoying, but they added to each other. And I would think about what it would mean if the other candidate were elected. The nagging of anxious ants crept into my place, and I let them push me out of my center.

I was forgetting something very important. I don’t mean I really forgot, but I certainly wasn’t remembering with my full awareness. God’s will is not about this candidate or that candidate. While I believe that God cares about us in each particular moment, it is arrogant to assume that any one of us at any moment is able to claim that we know the fullness of God’s will and that we will make it happen.

The night of the election, I was reading Hannah’s Child: A Theologian’s Memoir, by Stanley Hauerwas. Towards the end of the book, he writes about the response in our nation to the attacks of 9/11/01. Many had said that the events of that day forever changed our lives, and while there is no denying that the loss of our naiveté has launched us into a whirl of rhetoric and war, Stanley reminds us “that Jesus' death on the cross forever changed all that exists, including us.”[i]

I read those words, and my center, or my awareness of it, returned. Today I wrote to thank him:

In the midst of the latter days of this anxious election season, I found great hope and solace in your book. Any control we seem to have or any lack of control that makes us anxious is all an illusion. This whole endeavor of life is lived with the aegis of our God who is the One who brought us into being, who came into our midst to redeem us and who calls to us without end into the purposeful grace of God’s reign.

Election night, I went to bed without knowing how any state’s status was declared and didn’t learn any results until I woke the next morning. Neither re-elected President Obama nor a potential Romney presidency would or will bring about the kingdom of God. God’s kingdom is already among us and near at hand. Our job is live and worship as though the One we worship makes all the difference in the world, regardless of what the world might think. And that is what it is all about.

---

[i] (Stanley Hauerwas. Hannah's Child: A Theologian's Memoir (Kindle Location 3777). Kindle Edition.)

In the End

“The only good thing about the storm is that it was a break from all the campaign stuff,” I heard someone say this week. This person was obviously fed up with hearing and seeing so much about the election. I too have been fed up, and I don’t even watch TV. This has been the most contentious and expensive campaign that I have witnessed. There is a lot at stake in very different visions for our nation. I have found it hard not to be caught up in the anxiety that is rife and building ever higher.

I am not neutral in this match by any means. While I don’t plan to move out of the country if the other candidate is elected, it is hard to keep the longer view in mind. And I’m not talking about the longer view that is until the next election cycle, or the next decade or even the next century. I mean the longer and larger view that is God’s. When I was in college, I talked with my professor on the History of Christian Thought, David Bailey Harned. I was trying to understand the concept of predestination. Harned’s words have stayed with me all these years—“In the end, God’s will will be done.”

“In the END, God’s Will will be done.” That matters a great deal to me. It doesn’t mean that each event that occurs now aligns itself with God’s Will, but that in the broad scope and in the final analysis, God has the final say. I am also reminded that God can take what evil is done and bring about good from it. From the death of Christ on the cross, God wrought great good for all creation.

And so my anxiety pales in the long view. That is not to say that my vote, and your vote don’t matter. That is not say that every piece of either candidates’ vision for our nation is a part of bringing God’s kingdom here on earth. It is to say that my greatest trust cannot be in any party or position. My greatest and deepest trust must be in the One who set all Creation into motion, who cares deeply, and who calls it forward with purpose. When I feel my anxiety rise, I need to stop and breathe deeply of the Spirit who has given me life.

Romans 8:26-28

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.