CCOG Newsletter

For the past week, the talk of weather has crept into every conversation. Early in the week, Shane was sending me screenshots of his weather app... calling for 14-18 inches of snow! As time went on, the models changed and it went from the potential of a beautiful white wonderland to dangerous, icy conditions. Those kidding around on the radio were calling it "Snowpocalypse" and "Icemageddon". (All joking aside, I hope that everyone is safe and warm!).

The forecast of life, too, can seem to change from day to day, even moment by moment. One day you are healthy and happy, looking forward to the future. Then you get a call or a diagnosis or a setback that seems to change everything. Suddenly you find yourself in the middle of your own personal storm, wondering how things went downhill so quickly. In those times, please remember that God is present. He has never left you, and there is nothing that comes against you that has not first passed through His hand.

Jesus lived life with the clearest and highest purpose. Yet he veered and strayed from one interruption to the next, with no apparent plan in hand other than his single, overarching one: Get to Jerusalem and die. Otherwise, his days, as far as we can figure, were a series of zigzags and detours, apparent whims and second thoughts, interruptions and delays, off-the-cuff plans, spur-of-the-moment decisions, leisurely meals, serendipitous rounds of storytelling. Purposefulness requires paying attention, and paying attention means that we make room for surprise. We become hospitable to interruption. I doubt we can notice for long without this hospitality. And to sustain it we need a conviction in our bones that God is Lord of our days and years, and that his purposes and his presence often come disguised as detours, messes, defeats. ‘I came to you naked,’ Jesus says. ‘I came to you thirsty.’ ‘When, Lord?’ we ask, startled. When He wore the disguise of an interruption. Think a moment of all the events and encounters that have shaped you most deeply and lastingly. How many did you see coming? How many did you engineer, manufacture, chase down? And how many were interruptions? The span between life as we intend it and life as we receive it is vast. Our true purpose is worked out in that gap. It is fashioned in the crucible of interruptions.

Now Moses was pasturing the flock of Jethro … and he led the flock to the west side of the wilderness … and he looked, and behold, [a] bush was burning with fire, yet the bush was not consumed. So Moses said, "I must turn aside now and see this marvelous sight, why the bush is not burned up.'” Exodus 3:1-3

Moving From Head to Heart

• What if Moses hadn’t “turned aside?”
• Imagine yourself living as Jesus did, with “zigzags and detours …” etc. How would that feel?
• Can you become more hospitable to what happens in “the [vast] span between life as you intend it and life as you receive it?”

Abba, Grant us, we pray you, a heart wide open to all this joy and beauty, and save our souls from being so steeped in care or so darkened by passion that we pass heedless and unseeeing when even the thornbush by the wayside is aflame with the glory of God.

For More: The Rest of God by Mark Buchanan