(I started writing again, now focusing on what I want to impart to my children. I am undecided on whether to share these publicly for now but this is an example.)

They usually don’t make movies about writing but there is Finding Forrester with Sean Connery playing some hybrid combination of Ernest Hemingway and JD Salinger.  In an early scene, he writes in the notebook of the student he’s mentoring – “Where are you taking me?”  I have often pondered this scene and asked that question of God, especially as a teenager. The future looked so hazy, uncertain, and unclear.  In so many ways, that rarely changed in my life.

Recently, I realized that many of the significant events in my life – educational, professional, and personal, were last minute decisions or inspirations.  Some will call this impulsive or evidenced of lack of planning, foresight.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

In reality, I did a lot of research, analysis, and contemplation for whatever endeavor I pursued.  But God chose to do it this way. Perhaps it was to illustrate that oft quoted saying – “Man plans, God laughs.”  Less cynically, it was likely more about the power of trust and surrender.  I have also often pondered whether we choose our paths or whether it is chosen for us.  Probably a bit of both.

Above all that, it’s about taking one day at a time, step by step.  I am learning that may be the wisest way to live.  In the Jewish account of the Exodus from Egypt, God provides daily food for his people as they travel in the desert towards their destination, the Promised Land.  The way God does this though is interesting and highlights the role of daily grace and providence.  The people are instructed to gather only the amount of food that they need on a daily basis, manna that miraculously appears every morning.  Any excess gathered would spoil.  This is to teach total dependence on God, a concept truly foreign in modern life.  Dismissed as archaic and unrealistic, this is also a dangerous idea.

The reality is that everything and everyone will fail you in one way or another – job, people, possessions.  This doesn’t mean that these things don’t matter or have no power.  Many are even good and well-intentioned.  But anything or anyone but God isn’t designed to fulfill or satisfy.  This principle, I know, is very difficult to grasp, much less believe.  But I think it is true.  Try the alternative and you’ll find out eventually.

I also realize that God isn’t predictable.  His Spirit has been descended as a “wild goose.”  At first, this metaphor will seem disrespectful and even vulgar.  But this is actually what Jesus describes in Scripture – that it cannot be contained or limited, like the wild goose.  

This is actually good and a key difference between the living God and false ones. You actually want to worship and follow a God who cannot be contained or controlled.   That actually means He can act beyond the constraints of anything and anyone.  At some point, all you can and should do is sit back and trust in the path and process, knowing the character of who you are putting your hands in.  Again, easier said than done but as before, try the alternative.

Putting one’s faith and trust in a seemingly invisible, inaudible God is altogether scary.  But that’s when the mystery is found and the real magic happens.