Here it is March 22. Beautiful day, today. Spring is around the corner. I’m thinking about why I’m surprised that it snowed last week here in the Midwest. Why am I surprised? We life-long mid-westerners know that event planning can be very difficult. Those that predict the weather do the best they can to let us know what the weather may be like on any given day or weekend, sometimes days in advance. But most of us know that if we plan an event dependent on nice weather, we need to have a Plan B – a rain date, or snow date. I remember the time it snowed here in May! We here in the Midwest, like I said, know better than to put all of our trust in weather forecasters when we plan an outdoor event. If we’re not at that point after living here for many, many years, well, are we insane? I’m thinking of AA’s recovery concept that insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting different results.
“I’m going to trust the forecaster one more time; this time is going to be different. This weekend is going to be gorgeous. I’m going to embrace that. I’m expecting there’s going to be gorgeous weather!”
Know that I’m not criticizing weather forecasters! I think they are getting better and better at predicting the weather. But still, the weather can change rapidly; not having a Plan B can be disastrous.
I’m thinking that God is like the weather. He can shift the direction of where the two of us are heading in a flash. And if I’m envisioning that we’ll for sure be heading in one specific direction, maybe because I let him know that’s where I wanted to go, and then expect that God will agree to go in that specific direction, well, I’m setting myself up for a life filled with major disappointments! I need a Plan B just in case our Lord wants to travel in a different direction than I want us to go and/or if he wants to change our direction once we start.
In a nutshell, I just got done saying that God is unpredictable! That implies to me, anyway, that he doesn’t reveal a whole lot to us – that he wants to keep us guessing – that we’re pretty much left hanging in mid-air without stability as we journey with our God. And that uncertainty is what produces the necessity of having a Plan B.
Let’s look at Ephesians, chapter 1, a piece of verse 9: God has made known to us the mystery of his will.
God, then, isn’t as unpredictable as the weather is after all! In fact, God is quite predictable! We know that when we travel with our Lord, we can expect mystery. We can expect the crazy weather of life to batter us around at times. We can expect that an adventure awaits us at every turn and that having a Plan B is pretty much a ludicrous idea!
That sounds scary, doesn’t it? It is scary. Until we embrace the entirety of verse 9: “God made known to us the mystery of his will according to his kind intention towards us as revealed through Jesus Christ.”
There is mystery about God’s will, but it’s wrapped up inside God’s kindness and within the birth, the life, the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The mystery around God’s will, then, is summed up in one word: LOVE!
In Ephesians Chapter 1, this time including verses 2-8 along with verse 9, the Apostle Paul writes:
May God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ give you grace and peace. Praise God for His spiritual blessings in Christ. Give praise to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. He has blessed us with every spiritual blessing. Those blessings come from the heavenly world. They belong to us because we belong to Christ. God chose us to belong to Christ before the world was created. He chose us to be holy and without blame in his eyes. He loved us. He decided long ago to adopt us. He adopted us as his children with all the rights children have. He did it because of what Jesus Christ has done. It pleased God to do it. All those things bring praise to his glorious grace. God freely gave us his grace because of the one he loves. We have been set free because of what Christ has done. Because he bled and died, our sins have been forgiven. We have been set free because God’s grace is so rich. He poured his grace on us. [Verse 9:] By giving us great wisdom and understanding, he showed us the mystery of his plan. It was in keeping with what he wanted to do. It was what he had planned through Christ. (New International Reader’s Version)
Can you now perceive that the mystery of God IS Love?
Now here’s what’s mind-blowing and what each of us who has ever truly loved someone can relate to: Love is unpredictable!!!! Isn’t it? It can’t be controlled by the rules and regulations of religion or politics or by our own egos! Love, therefore, can be scary! Yet, predictable! As those of us who have truly loved someone can attest to, Love is predictable in that it’s all about perceiving our beloved for who they truly are and having the ability to separate their personhood from the raunchy attitudes and behaviors they may exhibit on any given day. Love is predictable in that it’s all about gifting our beloved with our best intentions. Love is predictable in that it’s all about sacrifice – we choose to lose for the sake of our beloved.
The mystery of God is the message of the cross of Jesus Christ – the Gospel – the Good News!
As we travel with our Lord, we know that we can’t depend on going in the direction we might envision for our lives. Our Lord may have other plans for us. In that way, he’s like the weather that can rapidly shift directions. In that way, our Lord is unpredictable. We need to embrace that fact by letting go of control.
The only way I can let go of control is to believe what I also know about God: I am God’s beloved. My Lord’s intentions toward me are predictable in that they will always be in my best interest. With that in mind, and only when I believe what I know, I’m able to expect and embrace the roller coaster of a ride my Lord and I are on.
