Betty and Jane’s 747 took off and gained enough altitude to circle Zurich above the trees but not above the mountains. For an hour they read Psalm 91 and First Corinthians 15 and prayed for safety. After 18,000 gallons of gas had been emptied, the plane with its 350 occupants came down safely amid cheers, on a field where fire engines, police cars, and ambulances had lined up in preparation. Couldn’t God have kept that bird out of the motor? What about the long delay, the missed connections, the day-late arrival?
Two weeks later Libby said farewells after last-minute prayer and went off on another 747, Zurich bound, on the first lap of a journey to San Francisco. Heavy snow and fog prevented landing in Zurich, and the plane made its way back to Geneva, to take off twenty-four hours later. What about that missed day which was to be used for an important discussion on the other end, with workers whose place Libby was to take? What about the guidance so clearly given to travel on that particular plane? The same stormy night two people who had come in the other direction, from California to L’Abri, arrived to find that twenty-two others had arrived that same day and there might not be any available bed.
The reaction to the unexpected was the most important reality in each of these situations. The only time for demonstrating steadfast trust is in the moment-by-moment “now.”
Consider seriously just how and when we can do the Lord’s will rather than our own, in the light of these emphatic directions from the Word of God: “Go to now, ye that say, Today or tomorrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain: whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that. But now ye rejoice in your boastings: all such rejoicing is evil. Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin” (Jas. 4:13–17). God is able to unfold his will to us as we ask for guidance, but in our finiteness and weakness we need to remember that we are in danger of jumping to conclusions and mapping put the future days and weeks when what the Lord has given us is only one step. Just where that stepping stone in the midst of swirling waters is leading may be quite different from what we think.
Is it wrong to have a schedule, to put down engagements in a notebook, to buy airplane tickets, to put a down payment on a house, to reserve rooms for a vacation months ahead of time, to enroll in a university? No, not at all. We are not told that we cannot plan ahead, or that God does not lead us in taking specific steps of preparation. However, we are strongly warned that we are not to be dogmatic in stating what we are going to do, and that we should preface our statements of plans with, “Lord willing I shall.…” We are told that there is even a danger of sin in our attitudes toward the Lord if we don’t acknowledge that we cannot demand a particular sequence of events in our future. God alone knows what this step he has led us to take is leading to. We must acknowledge that God alone is God practically, in everyday life.
“I delight to do thy will, O my God” (Ps. 40:8). When? When his will fits in with our flight schedule and the arrival is on time, with everything going smoothly? When a delay means conversation with someone who otherwise would not have had an important discussion about truth? When the reality fulfills the dream, or when the disappointment gives an opportunity to say, “What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee” (Ps. 56:3)? Trust is demonstrated only against the background of possible misunderstanding, or some kind of confusion, or dismay, or fear. “Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding” (Prov. 3:5); this speaks of the contrast between a “blueprint” type of expectation for the future and a human understanding of where each step is leading.
The following verse makes this more explicit: “In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.” The acknowledgment of the existence of the loving God takes place in our moment-by-moment life as we say and think “Lord willing” in connection with our plans for today, for the month and the year ahead. It is meant to be a vivid recognition of being a creature, of being finite, of being the child of the Infinite God. When the plane is in danger of crashing, when delays are not only annoying but exhausting, when there is no place prepared for us, then we have the practical opportunity to live out the “Lord willing” we say so glibly at times.
It may come as a shock to us to realize that our being “sure of God’s will” can suddenly crash headlong with being honestly willing for God’s will. We need to realize that maybe the reason we were taken on that particular plane was to live through the experience of trusting the Lord during that particular combination of difficulties. We need to remember that the Lord may choose to take us around the world in order to be delayed in the airport of his choice, for the benefit of just one person. Our time is his, as well as our money and our bodies. His plan is to be ours, even when it interrupts our ideas of his plan.
The “how” of living this way is the glorious gift of his strength in our weakness, expressed in First Corinthians 15:57 this way: “But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” God points to a victory we are meant to experience over the natural reaction of insisting we must have what we expected. When we experience this victory, then we can go on to verse 58 and include ourselves among the “brethren” being spoken to: “Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.” May we be steadfast in doing the work that is his will for us even when it clashes with our expectations.
