When I was young, I was taught what was called the four spiritual laws. It started
God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life
Well, yeah, but it is not our plan.
It is not our plan.
It is better. The two passages from the lectionary include two things that are understandable, but wrong.
The first is that Abram (Abraham) wanted his son, Ishmael, to be blessed from God and his heir — in part because he was now very old and is wife was not that much younger. Ishmael was, in his mind, his heir. But not God’s mind: Isaac was.
The second is that the crowd wanted to proclaim Jesus King by acclamation — and the scripture notes, by force. Christ had other plans.
15God said to Abraham, “As for Sarah your wife, you shall not call her Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. 16I will bless her, and moreover I will give you a son by her. I will bless her, and she shall give rise to nations; kings of peoples shall come from her.” 17Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed, and said to himself, “Can a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? Can Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?” 18And Abraham said to God, “O that Ishmael might live in your sight!” 19God said, “No, but your wife Sarah shall bear you a son, and you shall name him Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his offspring after him. 20As for Ishmael, I have heard you; I will bless him and make him fruitful and exceedingly numerous; he shall be the father of twelve princes, and I will make him a great nation. 21But my covenant I will establish with Isaac, whom Sarah shall bear to you at this season next year.” 22And when he had finished talking with him, God went up from Abraham.
23Then Abraham took his son Ishmael and all the slaves born in his house or bought with his money, every male among the men of Abraham’s house, and he circumcised the flesh of their foreskins that very day, as God had said to him. 24Abraham was ninety-nine years old when he was circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin. 25And his son Ishmael was thirteen years old when he was circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin. 26That very day Abraham and his son Ishmael were circumcised; 27and all the men of his house, slaves born in the house and those bought with money from a foreigner, were circumcised with him.
1After this Jesus went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, also called the Sea of Tiberias. 2A large crowd kept following him, because they saw the signs that he was doing for the sick. 3Jesus went up the mountain and sat down there with his disciples. 4Now the Passover, the festival of the Jews, was near. 5When he looked up and saw a large crowd coming toward him, Jesus said to Philip, “Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?” 6He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he was going to do. 7Philip answered him, “Six months’ wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little.” 8One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said to him, 9“There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish. But what are they among so many people?” 10Jesus said, “Make the people sit down.” Now there was a great deal of grass in the place; so they sat down, about five thousand in all. 11Then Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted. 12When they were satisfied, he told his disciples, “Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.” 13So they gathered them up, and from the fragments of the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten, they filled twelve baskets. 14When the people saw the sign that he had done, they began to say, “This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world.”
15When Jesus realized that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself.
Now, we plan for the future. We have to: at this time of the year, just before the students start, I am getting my schedule worked out for the year — and each year you have to adjust to what is happening to those you love.
We have to discipline ourselves to read and pray — Rich Froning gives examples in his book of how (akin to the workout of the day) he does a spiritual workout of the day — often memorization, or reading, or prayer.
And we are told to worry for the future. To get our monies into pension accounts. To set op trusts, To discern carefully who our spouse is. To plan our career. And we should.
But, in my life this has not worked. I did not intend when I left medical school to go into mental health — it was the last thing I wanted to do as I had been taught at medical school by some 1970s style therapists who I disliked. (My model and mentor in Mental Health is a now very ancient child psychiatrist with an appalling interview style who continually asks if there is evidence that this or that intervention works and the foundation professor of my medical school. But that happened much later). I never thought I had the intellectual horsepower to be an academic. I have ended up all of the above.
I am going to suggest that Christ has the dreams and plans. It is our job to do what is in front of us today. To be faithful today. If you are faithful today, you are likely to be faithful this week, this month, and over time develop the habits of righteousness, of prayer.
The cliché on this is marriage. Marriage is not the wedding. It is the daily caring for each other, in quite different ways: the wife does different things from the husband (most of the time) but the daily cups of tea, cleaning, working, eating together, loving each other makes a life together. Not one big event. Not one big dream, but consistency, fidelity, faithfulness.
For Abraham trusted that God was correct, and obeyed him, being circumcised in his old age, him and all his household. And Christ withdrew from the crowd, for he knew their agenda was not his.
We have to do what is needed now, and trust God for the future. In the long run we will all die, and all be accountable. Our job is to do good today, now, in these circumstances, in the place we are now: for most of us the joy in this life will come sneaking up in our ordinary activities. For God is merciful, and knows both the limits of our courage and how intense an emotion we can withstand.