“Life is what happens to you while you’re making other plans.” Who said that? Apparently there is some debate. The one who popularized it, oddly enough, was John Lennon. In his song “Beautiful Boy” on the album Double Fantasy, a song written for his son Sean, Lennon says “before you cross the street take my hand. / Life is what happens when you are making other plans.”
But those who know these things, or know how to check these things say that the quote is actually older than that. The first recorded appearance of “life is what happens,” was in 1957, in a Reader’s Digest, and is attributed to an Alan Saunders, who just might have been the cartoonist behind Steve Roper and Mary Worth (Google it kids). Which means the saying is as old as I am, thereabout. Which maybe says that it is my theme quote. Life is what happens when you’re making other plans. Not bad, as quotes go, don’t you think?
Now, some folks see tragedy in this quote. That it’s a warning that terrible things will come along and interrupt and disrupt and throw you off track. It’s another version of a similar quote: “Stuff Happens.” Yeah, OK, there’s another word there, but I’ll leave it with stuff for now. And maybe that’s what Lennon had in mind as he was contemplating raising a child in a complicated and dangerous world. Hold my hand, because stuff happens. Watch out, stuff will happen and your plans will come to nothing.
I can see that. And like Lennon, I know that raising a child is scary stuff. And that in fact, the scary stuff never stops. And we live in a scary age, with tragedies happening as a matter of course almost daily. This is our life, we think, this dash from tragedy to tragedy, from horror to horror, and it isn’t going to get any better, no matter how many plans you make. Life happens.
Sure, I live in this world too, I can see scary. But at the same time, I can see something else. Something maybe even comforting. Something about plans and about life and about me and about us. Something like this, maybe:
Jeremiah 29:11-14 For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the LORD, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope. 12 Then when you call upon me and come and pray to me, I will hear you. 13 When you search for me, you will find me; if you seek me with all your heart, 14 I will let you find me, says the LORD, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, says the LORD, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.
First of all, I know. I know that all you biblical scholars will point out that we so often misuse this text. We like to make it personal and individual, and it was really designed to be communal, corporate. That God, through the prophet Jeremiah, was talking to a people and not a person. And we have to resist the all too frequent urge to turn everything into a personal message just for us. We are prone to individualize everything, when God wants us to see ourselves as part of something larger, part of a family, part of a nation, the people of God.
And yet. I’m not undoing the previous paragraph, but hear me out. If this is indeed how God acts to all, can we not also interpret that this is how God acts to each? Yes, God wants me to read the plurals in the Jeremiah text. “I know the plans I have for all y’all, God says, plans for all y’all’s welfare not harm, to give all y’all a future with hope.” Jeremiah 29:11 DWSV (Derek Weber Southern Version) I know God wants me to know that my future and my plans aren’t just about me, but about a larger we. My part is woven into a whole with so many others.
But still, I can see the hand of God at work in the threads of my life as they begin to take shape into a tapestry of which I am a part, and not the whole. The pieces of my life, our lives, are falling into place, maybe not always in the exact way that we might have envisioned, but it is coming together. La Donna announced on her Facebook page that the house is sold, one piece fallen into place. Although a very helpful friend, thank you John, pointed out that it isn’t really sold yet because all the papers haven’t been signed just yet. True, and it all may fall apart, in which case we go back a few steps and start over. Trusting.
Just like we made a list of seven different houses that I was hoping to send to my realtor in Nashville so we could look at them next week. But when we checked again, six of them had been sold. Or at least under contract, thank you John again. I have to say that it is difficult to look at a house online, see the photos and then begin to imagine yourself in that house, with your stuff filling those spaces, only to have to undo those thoughts and pictures because that one is now gone. Life is what happens when you are making other plans. So, we look again. And again. And again if necessary.
Let me say, I don’t think I believe that God has a divine finger on the house that will be the one we finally get. I don’t believe that’s how God works. But that God’s Spirit sustains us through the anticipation and the disappointment and the working out of the transition that surrounds us. That God actually wants us to make plans. I’ve never been a fan of that other saying I’ve heard. You know, the one that goes, “you want to know how to make God laugh, tell God your plans.” That might on the surface seem like another version of life is what happens. But it actually seems to suggest that God doesn’t want us to make plans, doesn’t want us to work things out. That our job is just to sit and wait while God works everything out for us. I don’t think that’s how God works either.
We are supposed to plan, we are supposed to work things out. We are supposed to seek God’s will and how best to fit into the world that God intends us all to live into. At the same time to not be so wedded to those plans that we collapse if it doesn’t quite work out the way we first envisioned. And all along trust that God is with us. Even when things aren’t quite going the way we plan.
Go back to the text, and see what the promise really is. What is the future with hope that God wants to provide? What is the fortune that will be restored and the home that we will be gathered into? The real promise is this: “Then when you call upon me and come and pray to me, I will hear you. When you search for me, you will find me; if you seek me with all your heart, I will let you find me, says the LORD ...”
That’s where we’re going, that’s the home God promises to us. A home in the neighborhood of God. A home in the Presence. I don’t believe God has our house picked out in the Nashville area, that’s work that we and our realtor have to do. But I do believe that God will be there, wherever it is, and will sustain us and strengthen us and guide us as we seek to find our fortune there, the fortune of the family of God, the mission of God’s people, God’s church. And there are so many people with whom we will interact and connect and grow and serve alongside, here and there and everywhere. We are bound together in the plan of God.
In the meantime, there are pieces fitting together. This house is nearly sold. Rhys has a plan that will let him stay here, Maddie has a new job in Boston, things are coming together. Lots more questions, more plan to work out. And in the meantime, life happens. For us and for all. I pray that the life that happens to you is one of joy and peace and is full of the Presence of God.
Shalom,
Derek
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