Waves, not Blueprints

‘Or who shut in the sea with doors
when it burst out from the womb?—
when I made the clouds its garment,
and thick darkness its swaddling band,
and prescribed bounds for it,
and set bars and doors,
and said, “Thus far shall you come, and no farther,
and here shall your proud waves be stopped”?
Job 38:8-11

Several years ago, a very smart person introduced me to the idea of "gift-based planning", as opposed to "need-based planning". It's a pretty simple concept. You shape your life to fit the gifts you already have, rather than the stuff you think you need in order to have the life you think you want. To used the tired image of "glass half full/half empty", gift-based planning doesn't ask how to you're going to get the other half glass of water, but rather, what you're going to do with the half glass you already have. Because I'm a pastor and because I heard this in the context of visioning as a congregation, that's where my mind goes first, but really, it could apply to the life of any person or organization. We use both types of planning in our daily lives. Presumably, we choose a line of work based on our gifts-- what we're competent at, what we get joy from doing--but also based on our needs, i.e., food on the table, a place to stay, etc...

So I'm a guy who tends to think in metaphors. That's how I'm wired. We English majors pride ourselves on such silly stuff. But I had occasion to go to the Jersey Shore with my wife last week, and it was heavenly. Now, I'm not much for tanning (for which my healthy 80-year-old self is likely thankful), but if there is one thing that will inspire me to bare my pasty Wookie-esque torso, it's swimming in the ocean. There is just nothing in the world like it. And last week, dancing with the tide, jumping over some waves, diving under others, and in a few cases, getting a perfect ride in to the shore, I realized that I'd like to approach life as a good swim in the ocean of God's abundance.

What tends to be standard for me, though, is to treat my life as a construction site. I'm guessing I'm not alone. We are born onto the building site, with nothing there. Some of us have very tough situations to overcome: the uneven soil and persistent brush of dysfunction, poverty, lack of education, etc. And yet, at a certain point, we all play the architect, and draw up a blueprint of our lives, and get to work building. And of course, when we build that building, we expect it to last a long time, static and unchanging against the landscape. We expect God to provide us with the building materials: the concrete, the lumber, the steel beams, everything we imagine we will need to build the life we imagine we're supposed to have. Anytime the building materials don't come, or don't come in the amount or the order in which we expect them, or something collapses, it's a recipe for frustration. We blame ourselves for not being smart enough or working hard enough to get what we want. We blame others for standing in our way. We blame God for not giving us the shape of life that we wish we had. It's all need-based: we pay no attention at all to whether or not the actual gifts and opportunities that are coming our way fit our blueprint, or whether God might be trying to change our picture a bit.

Real life, as I've experienced it, is much more like swimming in the ocean. It's amazing to me when I go to the ocean (perhaps because I'm easily amused) that it never, ever stops. It's a constant whisper. Day and night, high tide, low tide, every second of every minute of every day for billions of years, the waves have been crashing in. Those waves are like the opportunities God sends to us. They never stop, but they're always changing. And none of them--not a single one--lasts forever. Most of the things that come our way in a single day are not quite right: a wave that isn't big enough, or crested way before it got to you, or won't crest until after it's past you. Sometimes, whatever the idea you have in your head about what you're supposed to do, it's just not the right time, or you're not standing in the right place, and you'll save yourself a lot of confusion and pain if you just swim over it or dive under it.

But here's the thing: the "right" waves--the right calling, relationship, friendship, hobby, the right way of serving God for you in the present moment--are crashing in all around you, all the time. You really can't miss them: unless, of course, you're momentarily distracted messing around with something that feels only half right based on your gifts or passions; trying to make something work based on the blueprint you already decided on. But even if you do get distracted, and we all do, it's not our fault and it's not God's. It's a chance to learn to read the waves.

There's a tendency sometimes, when something happens that makes a big, positive impact on our lives, to assume that it was part of one single linear chain of events that God had set out for us since the beginning of time: it just couldn't have been any other way. It was in the blueprint. I don't believe that. I don't believe it because even the things you were so sure were part of God's plan for you--your dream job, your dream home, your relationship to your "soul mate"--eventually come to an end. Every wave crests, and every wave hits the shore. Some of the really good ones take our whole lives to get there, and I especially thank God for those ones. But I could never sit with a recent widow or widower, or with someone recently laid off, and just shake my head and say what they've just lost was the only possible blueprint for fulfillment that God has to offer.

The hard fact is that what we often say was "meant to be" was one of thousands or even millions of "meant to be's" that God sends our way every day. And we have the terrifying freedom, as God's redeemed children, to pick one, commit to it, start paddling, and see where it takes us. God doesn't give us a blueprint or a finite number of bricks and beams for our lives. God gives us a dynamic ocean of infinite swirling, cresting, crashing possibility, and God works with our choices--even the bad ones--to get us where we need to go.

For my church friends out there, I would not blame you one bit for feeling a little beat up: like the blueprints that used to work for building communities of believers are not working anymore. So it's time to throw away the blueprint, walk down the street, take off your shoes, and wade in the ocean of God's grace. There's stuff happening out there all the time. God is up to more in any fraction of any second than we could possibly imagine if he had a million years to reflect on it. And there are wonderful possibilities for taking part in God's Reign all around us. The surf's up, and it always has been. This is going to be a lot more fun than we had originally planned.