I was driving many months ago and got lost. Shocker! I even had GPS, but…out in the country, signal problems, blah blah. So I went old-school and asked a guy at the sad-looking gas station. He leaned against his rusted old truck, swapped the cigar stub from one side of his mouth to the other and said, “Well, that’s a fine place you’re trying to get to…” He then regaled me with a few tales of how much fun he had there on various trips. After a short window of semi-patient listening to his tales, I finally asked my direction question again.
He laughed, topped of his tank, and hung the handle on the gas pump. “You can’t get there from here, missy,” he said. “You got to go back south to the dam and cross over, or you have to go north until you can skirt the northern edge.” Both of those directions were a good hour out of my way.
“Well, I replied not much satisfied with his answer, “isn’t there a place to cross the lake closer than that?”
“Yep,” he said as he climbed in his truck, slammed the door, and cranked the engine, “but you have to be able to swim…” He raised a hand in farewell and I could swear I heard him laughing as he drove away…
Not surprisingly, we drove the hour. We got to our destination later than we wanted, but we saw some great scenery along the way.
For most of us, our walk with God is like this. We want to be at X (more holy, less sinful, closer to God – or just plain have a better job or better marriage!). We don’t know how we got lost in this place where we are, but we’d like to be found and arrive at X any minute now. Ok. Maybe tomorrow. Patience is a virtue, and all.
None of us want to hear “you can’t get there from here”. None of us want the detour, backtrack, extra time/energy/effort it takes to take the long way around to our destination. And if our destination requires other human beings to participate…? Well! We certainly don’t want to wait on that person to take the long way! They need to shape up now…or tomorrow, because, you know, patience.
While God is hardly a tale-telling, stogy-smoking old man in a beat up truck, it is possible that some of God’s wisdom is held by that man: I can’t get there from here.
God no doubt knows how to get me from here to X (I am skipping whether or not X is “God’s plan” – that is more than I can bite off in this short blog!). God could even waive His mighty will and move me to X in an instant – supernaturally and miraculously transformed! That He does not do so means a couple of things:
~ He has some scenery He wants me to see – things to learn, giggles to have, tears to cry… X is a fine place, but I have to become the person he wants me to become for X to be that “fine place.” Moving me straight to X is probably not going to force me to change or grow. I need to experience some scenery first.
~ He has time in mind. While God exists outside time, you and I do not. He is not unaware of this. Timing is important to God. He knows that we live inside time. So, if it isn’t happening now, then it could be that God is working on the timing. For me, for others, or for some inscrutable reason I will never see.
~ He will let me swim it. I can ditch all the scenery and delay, if I am willing to get wet, muddy and miserable. But God – like my gas-pump friend – is going to laugh ruefully if I opt to take the short cut. I can just about hear Him saying, “OK…but this is not going to work out well for you, sweet one.”
James, in his gospel, tells us that we should count it all joy when we face trials of many kinds, for these trials produce patience, which renders us mature and complete, lacking nothing. I am mindful that James does not promise that God will give us our hearts’ desires. God doesn’t promise me I will have X in this world. He does promise me that He is going to go with me on this round-about journey and that I will become “mature and complete” if I persevere on it.
I can’t get to “mature and complete, lacking nothing” from here. I can only get there when I go the long way around, see some scenery, bide the time, count it all joy.
I know – it isn’t welcome news for those of us who live in instant mashed-potatoes, drive-thru everything, smoke-em-while-you-got-em culture. But then, God is calling us out of that culture, right? We are called into His Kingdom – which is usually going to be polar opposite of this world. If I want to get to God’s Kingdom from here, I am going to have to do it God’s way.