Survival Skill 3 – Accept Mystery

Our lives just aren’t predictable. Our lives just don’t work the way we planned. And with all of our strategizing and our planning, and all of our work to make our lives predictable and comfortable we are always dealing with the unexpected.

It’s hard to talk about it even now; it’s one of the calls that a parent never wants to get. I was told to get to the hospital as soon as I could because our daughter was there in Trauma Care. She had been in an accident and she was very, very seriously injured. I was out of town and Luella, my wife, called me. She told me to get home as fast as I could. That trip home seemed as if it took days not hours. I didn’t know what I would be facing. Our daughter Nicole had been walking down the street in center city Philadelphia when out of nowhere an SUV came up on the sidewalk and crushed her up against the wall. She had massive internal bleeding, she had multiple breaks of her pelvis, and she had injuries to both of her legs. I will never forget walking into that Intensive Care room, and seeing my daughter laying there with her terribly broken body. I felt so incredibly unprepared. I felt so completely helpless. As I bent over her bed and went to kiss her I began to cry; she could sense that I was there and she began to cry. We just didn’t know what to do. You struggle with knowing what to say. Your mind is filled with all the possibilities of what could happen in the days to come. You wonder where all of it will end and you can’t help but cry and you wonder why, why, why did this happen?

If you think about any given day, any given week, any month, any year, you know that you’re constantly facing the unexpected. Your life doesn’t work according to your plan. It just doesn’t. If you haven’t figured that out you’re probably pretty comatose. Now, maybe it isn’t some big, cataclysmic event like the accident of my daughter, but you’re constantly dealing with things you didn’t plan. Maybe it’s just something as simple as traffic that made havoc out of your day before it ever began. Or maybe you get a phone call from a friend who needs your help and your day ends up being very different than what you thought it would be.

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Perhaps your boss told you that the company you work for is dissolving your division and your services won’t be needed, and as you’re driving home, you’re thinking of what the future is going to be, you’re thinking of how you’re going to tell your husband or your wife, you’re thinking about how you’re going to pay your bills, you just can’t believe that suddenly you’re dealing with something that you never ever thought you would deal with. Or maybe one of your children just brought home a note from school that tells you that he or she is having struggles with his learning and suddenly you’re going to be in all kinds of school appointments; you’re going to be dealing with things again that you didn’t think that you were going to be dealing with. Maybe you just got your physical and the doctor has told you that he wants to put you through some more tests.

You see, every day in some way, all of us are dealing with the unexpected. Every day all of us are surprised at what life brings our way. Every day we are turning corners that face us with things that weren’t in our schedules and that weren’t in our plans but that we’re required to deal with. Maybe it’s an unexpected situation. Maybe it’s an unexpected bill. Maybe it’s an unexpected conflict. Maybe it’s an unexpected opportunity, duty, responsibility; the fact of the matter is that our lives just aren’t predictable, our lives just don’t work the way we’ve planned. And with all of our strategizing, and all of our planning, and all of our work to make our lives predictable and comfortable, we are always dealing with the unexpected. Maybe you feel stuck in a job you thought you never thought you’d be stuck in, or trapped in a relationship you never thought you’d be trapped in, or dealing with an issue that you never thought you’d be dealing with. Maybe you’re facing things as a parent that you never thought you’d be dealing with in your family. Or dealing with something in your marriage that you never thought you’d be dealing with in your marriage. Or dealing with something physically that you just didn’t think you’d be dealing with; you’ve been healthy and you’ve sort of taken physical invincibility for granted and now you’re dealing with something. Maybe you’re living in a location that is very different from where you thought you’d live. You see, you and I don’t need to read a gripping mystery novel, because we’re always dealing with the mysteries of our own lives. Our lives are a mystery. Have you ever wondered why?

My Dad was a hard working man; sort of the definition of the American Protestant work ethic. First up in the morning, last to go to bed at night, not only worked a full time job but also had some businesses based from our house. And for reasons I’m not sure I understand, my dad had focused on this one part of this dream of work and work success that he‘d never been able to experience. He’d never gone out and bought a brand new car. He’d always wanted to buy a brand new car but he’d never been able to do that. In 1959 my dad was able to buy a brand new Plymouth Belvedere. Now I don’t know if you know what that car looked like but it was a very ugly automobile. It was two-toned peach and cream. This car looked like a bad dessert. And it had great big fins on the back. You couldn’t drive this car in the wind! But my dad was so proud of it. I’ll never forget him wheeling the car into the driveway. It had a cream colored interior made of that plastic substance, fake leather called naugahide. The type of stuff that if you sat in the car above 70 degrees you’d stick to the seat; a big white steering wheel, push button automatic. My dad was so excited about this car. He had us out to sit behind that big wheel. The next day he decided that since he had a new car he would go down to AAA and join. It just seemed the right thing to do. So he stuck my brother Mark and me in the car; we were just really young little guys, and drove us down to the center of Toledo Ohio to AAA on that Saturday. Probably driving faster than he should, he wheeled the car into the lot of AAA, was blinded by the sun and totaled it on a post in the middle of the lot. I’ll never forget my dad getting out of the car mumbling to himself “Well I guess I should join AAA”. He walked up to the front door only to discover that it was closed on Saturdays. And I’ll never forget my father walking back and standing in front of the car, now his broken dream, with both fists clenched and screaming “What in the world is going on?” And if you haven’t cried that you’re probably near somebody who is crying that way right now. If you haven’t cried that, you probably will someday.

How do you make sense of your relationship with God and the things that are happening in your life in the here and now? Maybe the two most important questions we can ask in all of life are these: first, “What in the world is God doing”? And second “How in the world should I respond to it?” You see you can’t be what you’re supposed to be in the here and now, and do what you’re supposed to do as you deal with the mystery of the unexpected, if you can’t answer these questions.

Read for a moment what the Apostle Peter wrote to people who were suffering through the unexpected (1 Peter 1:3-9):

“Praise be to the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ! In His great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade - kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in this last time. In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith - of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire - may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.”

Think about this; of all of the descriptive words in the human language; of all of the adjectives that he could have employed to describe the here and now; notice the three words that Peter uses. Grief, suffer and trials. Why would he use these three words? Why of all words does Peter think grief, suffer and trials are the most appropriate words to describe the here and now. Well, he gives us a physical example to help us understand why he chose those words. It’s the example of metallurgy. You see, when the metallurgist mines a metal it’s in its ore state. Ore is not very attractive and ore is not very usable because ore has imperfections in it. And the metallurgist instinctively knows that he has to add a catalytic agent and white hot heat and he will, in the process, boil out of that metal, all of those imperfections so it reaches its’ highest state of strength and its’ highest state of beauty. Now get the application of this example. When you and I come to Christ we are ore-ific Christians. We have imperfections in us that rob us of our strength and rob us of our beauty. God couldn’t possibly love us and yet leave us in that condition. He’s committed to complete the work he began in us. So get this principal. It’s very important. God will take you where you do not want to go in order to produce in you what you could not achieve on your own. God will take you where you do not want to go in order to produce in you what you could not achieve on your own.

God is not working so that you will be thrilled with your life. God’s not working hard so that you can have a smile on your face. God is not seeking to deliver you to your own personal definition of happiness. No, he’s actually working on something that’s much, much better. He wants more for you than you want for yourself. He’s in the process of radically transforming us into what we were meant to be when we were created. So, again, God is going to take us where we do not want to go in order to produce in us what we could not achieve on our own. You see, that difficulty in my life has purpose and meaning. Those situations that are unexpected, those trials that I didn’t think I was going to face, those difficulties that are obstacles in the way of my definition of a comfortable, happy, satisfying life, are not the result of God turning His back on me. They are not the result of God forgiving me; they are in fact the result of God remembering me. God realizes that there is still ore-ism in me; there are still imperfections in me. There are still things that I struggle with that are not part of my strength, not part of my beauty. God realizes that I’m not finished yet. The job isn’t done yet; I’m still broken in many ways. And so, yet again, God will take me where I’ve never planned to go in order to produce in me what I could not achieve on my own. That’s why I face the unexpected, that’s why I deal with the unpredictable, that’s why I’m always going to have to accept mystery in my life. Because I’m not in fact in charge of my life, God is, and He’s always doing something good.

If what Peter said is true, then think about it. Here’s what we all need to be doing: in the midst of the unexpected, in the midst of the unpredictable, we all need to be comforting one another with the theology, get this term, of uncomfortable grace. You see, if you’re one of God’s children, you need to tell yourself and the people around you, that unexpected difficulties just plainly and simply are not signs of Gods’ unfaithfulness and inattention; rather, they are sure signs of His presence and love. That’s so different from the way we normally think. We normally think if God loves me he’s going to bring all these good and wonderful things into my life. But it’s our definition of what’s good, it’s our definition of what’s wonderful, and they tend to be things that are pleasurable and wonderful rather than what God has in mind for us. You see, God could not love you and be satisfied with leaving you just as you are. Think about it. Your ore-ism showed last week; it did. Be honest, be humble. Maybe it was in a moment of anger. Anybody angry out there? Maybe it was a struggle with envy. Are you ever jealous or envious of someone else? Perhaps you let a conversation descend into ugly gossip. You didn’t want to go there but you ended up going there in the end. Maybe you’re struggling with lust and it’s eating up your thoughts and it’s a private secret thing and you know it’s wrong. Perhaps you were at a party and you did everything you could to put yourself in the center of attention. Maybe you’ve been really irritable with your husband or your wife and you’ve been hard to get along with this week. Or maybe you’ve been far too impatient with your children, saying and doing things you really shouldn’t be saying or really shouldn’t be doing. You see, all of us, everyday, demonstrate again and again God’s need to continue to work on us. God loves you too much to leave you unfinished. He cares for you too much to leave you undone. So he comes to you with uncomfortable grace. Sure, you and I want the grace of relief; we want the grace of release. And the grace of release and relief will come someday, but what we really need now is the grace of refinement.

Are there places where you’re crying for the grace of God and you’re not realizing that you’re getting it? But it’s not the grace of relief and it’s not the grace of release; it’s the boiling grace of personal transformation. Again, God will take you where you do not want to go in order to produce in you what you could not achieve on your own. In those unexpected moments, don’t run away from your Lord, run to him. You are not being forsaken you are being loved.

What does all this really mean? Well here it is! You can look mystery in the face and have hope. You can live in the middle of a life that you don’t really understand, that you can’t really figure out and you can rest. You can deal with the unexpected with joy. You can accept mystery; and you can do it because you can look through the clouds of mystery and see a God of love who is actually near when he seems far. He’s actually active when he seems passive; who is doing something very good right in the middle of when things seem that they’re going very badly. Are there places when you just can’t figure out what God is doing? Are there places where it feels that he’s not near? Where right now in your everyday experience are you dealing with the unexpected? God is at work in your life. He hasn’t turned His back on you. You see, you can accept mystery because in the middle of the unexpected there is love and grace and help to be found. God is right smack dab in the middle of your unexpected moment and he is up to something very, very good.