Old Friends and Long Roads
When a group of old guys who have known each other since college gather, it doesn't take much for them to slip back into familiar rhythms. Each winter for over 40 years, close after Christmas, I have gotten together with a group of chuckleheads whom I treasure. We all were friends at OSU in the '70s and we have hitched our wagons to Jesus, and committed to keep in contact with one another. When we gather we eat, retell old adventures, have played some bad poker, dog each other (if you have a thin skin this isn't the group for you), then settle in to share stories of the past year. For many, this night is the only contact we have with each other, but it always seems like no time has passed. Each guy takes as much time as needed to recount the ways God has led them along their journey the past year. And over the years we have heard it all.
This time around one of our tribe (our token lawyer) made the observation that none of our life stories lay out in a linear pattern, but somehow each of us carry the expectation of just that kind of trajectory. It is a common and thoroughly human deceit that if we follow Jesus and try to live good lives, then life unfolds in a singular direction, a mostly straight line all the way home. Life, however, has a way of turning what we imagine as a straight path into variations of the "long and winding road."
Our group carries the very natural expectation/desire/wish that life will get better as we go. But we have walked with these friends through good times as well as job losses and cancer and addiction and divorce and death and betrayal and and and... and seen life as something quite different than how we planned it to be. It's not hard to squint with some bit of skepticism when God says through Jeremiah to Jews living in captivity with little hope of returning a message that includes this line:
I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.
The problem for me believing a verse like this might be true for me lies in my limited sight-lines of understanding of the workings of God. I see life best played out in straight lines when reality has me traveling many many miles of twisting and undulating broken-pavemented roads to arrive , finally, at this life's finish line. What I miss as I gritch and moan along the way is the work being done in me as I travel. That just might mean what was said for the Jews so long ago could be God's idea for a guy like me today.
This has been showcased time after time through the stories my friends and I have shared around the table.
Hard times? Sure.
Pain? Certainly.
Unanswered prayers and living in the midst of huge questions? You bet.
But has God showed up strong? Absolutely.
Every time? Yup.
Man after man has said that while they never planned on their detours and never want to repeat any of it, Jesus taught them lessons that can be learned nowhere else, and the hope and future promised by him seem ever more real. They/we have learned to broaden our definition of "prosper" to be so much more than a pain-free life. To "prosper" in Jesus is so much more than a Lake Wobegon existence where "the women are strong, the men are good looking, and all the children are above average."
While this verse in Jer. 29 is not directed to us specifically, we can rightly distill some principles from it. Let's break it down.
I know... We follow a God who is in control of it all. He can be trusted to do, ultimately, what is best but is not probably what we planned.
the plans I have for you... Jesus calls us by name and has designed a life where opportunities are laid out for us even when we are facing giants.
plans to prosper you and not harm you... This is often hard to own, but he constantly calls us to look over the horizon of this life to what all lies ahead, forever, and in the meantime to flourish, to live life to the fullest extent possible.
plans to give you hope and a future... We prosper now in the midst of the mud because we hold on to a certain hope based on his character. Hope is the most precious and powerful force we hold to face an uncertain life. We have confidence we have a future.
While we live and hope and struggle, it's good to know, deep down within us, that we follow a God with his eye on us, who uses all of life's detours to build in us a resilient and compassionate heart, and who waits for us to join him for the rest of eternity. I might dream of a linear path from here to there, but life delivers curves and scars and scratches in the paint of my life. Scars will stand as our storytellers, paint scratches recall the times when life was on the edge, and the curves will have taken us to just the places we needed to go to see all that life has to offer. And on that whole path, God was not far off, but "with" us, every step of the way.
Let's lean into our journey and write with faith our story. That's the best we can do.
How about some music for the week:
...and a funny that ties to today's message
A little boy was afraid of the dark. One night his mother asked him to go out to the back porch and bring her the broom.
He said, "Mama, I don't want to go out there. It's dark."
The mother smiled and said, "You don't have to be afraid of the dark. Jesus is out there. He'll look after you and protect you."
The boy looked at his mother real hard and asked, "Are you sure he's out there?"
"Yes, I'm sure. He is everywhere, and he is always ready to help you when you need him," she said.
The little boy thought about that for a minute and then went to the back door and cracked it a little. Peering out into the darkness, he called: "Jesus? Would you please hand me the broom?"
**One more and more of a music groaner:
Me: My tire's making a whistling sound.
Mechanic: Sounds like a flat.
Me: More like an F sharp.