No Template for the Future

I’ve been a dreamer most of my life.  I spent a lot of time pretending I was the characters I read about in books or watched in movies.  Who didn't want to be a Goonie or get to be Molly Ringwald in any John Hughes movie of the 1980s?  What about those beautiful ruby red slippers that adorned Judy Garland's feet in The Wizard of Oz?  When things got really rough all Dorothy had to do was click her shoes together, close her eyes and say the magic words: "There's no place like home."  Home was the last place I wanted to be growing up.  My aunt used to let me spend the night at her house and I would run out my front door as she arrived shouting, "I'm free, I'm free!"

My natural bend is toward safe and sacred places.  I use them as a guide for the way I want to experience life and also as a means of escaping the hard things that appear as anything that might threaten peace in my life.  I create my own template for God.  The problem with this is that while these things may have the appearance of keeping me safe, they increasingly become my captivity.  It got me thinking about the Israelites and how God delivered them out of Egypt.  Me, in all my humanness, feels a bit like the Israelites.  In their suffering they cried out to God.  God was faithful to protect them, keeping his promise.  Their expectations, however, got the best of them.  My expectations get the best of me.  

As I reflected on the past year and a half, God mercifully revealed areas where I mostly grumbled about my circumstances more than I realized where his hands were working in the midst of them all along.  Homes became classrooms and offices.  We had to face hard truths or maybe we tried to avoid them.  Our comforts were removed from our tight grips. Yet again, God has been faithful and as we move forward into this new time in history, the future that we're currently beginning to experience just on the outskirts of a global crisis is being written anew.  To be completely transparent, it is both exciting and terrifying.  The dreamer in me is hopeful and expectant of what God will do because I know he's created in me something beautiful and purposeful for his kingdom.  I think to myself, Lord, how will you use this new season to glorify your Mighty name?!  

I also grieve what was before; both people and places and experiences I will treasure in my heart.  There is a passing away of things on this earth that God will again breathe new life into.  Nothing I could ever do, nor plan, not even the best script from a Hollywood blockbuster, could ever amount to the magnificent things our God can do.  We don't need to know what the future holds because we can trust the One we know holds our future.  Most of us would likely not want to remember where we’ve been because, if you’re like me, you just want to know where you're going now.  I nervously giggled as I wrote that sentence.  I desire to move into agreement with God; to get obedient because I know it's really the safest place I could ever be.  

Remembrance is part of a rhythm God gave us so that we could keep going and keep returning to him.  Jesus demonstrated both gentleness and strength because he is the good shepherd.  We can trust him to lead.  He has already sought out our good.  He seeks to comfort us and not to condemn us.  His redeeming character is not lessened by the actions and events of this world but all things fall under his authority.  I love the way Isaiah describes this as the Israelites were in exile.  "Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom I delight; I will put my spirit on him, and he will bring justice to the nations." (42:1)  Go a few verses down and he declares again, "I, the Lord, have called you in righteousness.  I will take hold of your hand.  I will keep you and will make you a covenant for the people and a light for the Gentiles, to open the eyes that are blind, to free captives from prison and to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness." (42:6-7).  For such a time as this, what might God be calling you forward into? From what template might he set you free?  He's already given you everything you need to take the next right step because of who he is.