Prosperous Planning?

I've become more relaxed when it comes to planning. I realise that when other people are involved they don't necessarily work to my time scale. So when I am planning, I don't always expect people to respond in the way I expect them to respond (if that makes sense!?). I plan in the way I see best, but make the plan flexible enough to be changed when it needs to be. I think there are a number of different types of people when it comes to planning......

Those who have everything planned in meticulous detail - who have a folder of routes and ideas and timetables and find it difficult to deviate from the detail. These people work better with those who just want someone else to make the plan. 

Those who want to collaborate with others when it comes to planning, but then when it comes down to it, get frustrated and end up becoming the one who plans in meticulous detail, but without the folders and the timetables, and with a gentle sniff of flexibility (I think I am this person). 

Those who have a vague plan in their head which only comes out with the right questions. These are often the most frustrating, but come out with some amazing stuff!

Those who plan last minute, are always late and would rather someone tell them what to do until someone tells them what to do. I'm never this person. 

We all seem to have a different view of what it means to make a plan. When you ask 'what's the plan?' each of these different people will have different answers.... from here it is planned out minute by minute to 'wait and see'. 

I've listened to a couple of sermons lately where I've been told that God has a plan for my life, so it's all going to be OK.  I've been told that if my life isn't going to God's plan (ie not going well) then I'm clearly not a good Christian. I've also read a few blogs that have been frustrated about the misuse of Jeremiah 29:11, which was said to a particular people group at a particular time and shouldn't be misused to tell me that God has a plan for my life. 

What I struggle with in this apparent plan of God where I am told that life is going to be rosy is when I see friends who are having a really hard time; who are suffering seemingly needlessly because things haven't worked out and then are told, well it's going to be OK, God has a plan, and it's wonderful. I believe God has a path for me to go on, but I think we've warped this idea of that plan by surrounding it with the phrase 'it'll be OK because......'. 

The thing is Jeremiah 29:11 doesn't talk about things going well right now. It doesn't talk about the Israelites escaping from exile right now. God tells the Israelites, who are stuck in Babylon, to make the best of a bad situation because there is hope in the future. They didn't want to be stuck in Babylon. They didn't want to be there so much they got angry and Psalm 137 was written where the babies of those who have hurt them are smashed against the rocks. This is not the Psalm of a nation who are are happy to be in exile, happy to say, well, it's OK, God has plans, but is the Psalm of a nation who are so frustrated at their situation that they express emotion by wanting to hurt the Babylonians as much as they have been hurt. 

Sometimes when we say, don't worry, it's going to be OK, God has plans, we forget that the people we are saying it to are those who have had everything meticulously planned out but have been thrown into exile. When we see the plight of Christians driven out of their homes in Iraq, we can't imagine saying 'don't worry, Jeremiah 29:11'. 

What this verse does promise the Israelites, however, is that there is hope in the future. They are promised hope in a future where they will prosper. They did eventually make it out of exile, but life was never the same again. For me, that hope comes in Christ, who was sent by God into the world to die so all may be restored - so that all may have eternal life. When we talk about plans we are not talking about life getting better today, or tomorrow. When we talk about plans we are not talking about that deep seated pain an individual has gone through being what God wanted for that person. When we talk about plans, we see hope in the future that there will be a way out of this, that there is hope that there will be a future where there will be no more pain or sickness or death. This is Christian hope. This is the hope that brings to completion the plans of prosperity in Jeremiah 29:11. We might see glimpses of that as we journey through life, but that hope of prosperity is more than a glimpse.  

When Christ came to earth as a human being, he brought God's Kingdom to earth. I believe we are living in a time where God's Kingdom has come through Christ, but that the world has not been fully restored. When we see glimmers of hope, through healing, through reconciliation and through the clear signs of God's love poured down on earth, we see some of that Kingdom. We were told in church this morning that where we stand against what society chooses to do that doesn't reflect God's Kingdom we need to offer an alternative. Where people are fighting we need to seek peace, where people have no food we need to seek to bring food, where people are suffering we need to stand in solidarity with them to bring them out, where Richard Dawkins suggests abortion is better than a child with Downs Syndrome (his words this week have made me so angry) we need to speak out. Every time we do that we bring glimpses of hope, glimpses of God's Kingdom, glimpses of those plans that God has for us. Hope that speaks of this:

"He will settle disputes among great nations. They will hammer their swords ploughs and their spears into pruning-knives. Nations will never again go to war, never prepare for battle again".        Isaiah 2:4

Don't pick your scab.

Don't pick your scab. 

Some of the best advice that I was given when growing up. If you pick your scab it won't heal very well, it will bleed again, it will get infected. I once was running home from a friends house wearing my ballet shoes (I never did ballet - I've never been dainty enough or had the coordination - but I had ballet shoes) and I fell over. I seem to remember I was carrying roller skates. Why I was wearing ballet shoes with roller skates anyway I have no idea and am surprised I didn't fall over earlier. Anyway, I fell over and my knee did that thing - it bled everywhere. I got an amazing scab. 

A little while later (days? weeks?) I was at a Girls Brigade party and the scab that I had evidently been picking was knocked off in a game. My knee started to bleed again and as a result I have now on my right knee a white mark where it never had chance to heal properly. 

Don't pick your scab. 

As we journey through life we pick up wounds - some of them heal completely, some of them scab over. The trouble is that the ones that simply scab over get picked at at random intervals and they begin to bleed again. They stop us in our tracks as we realise that once again we need to clean up the mess and put a plaster on and wait for them to scab over again trying to get to the point where we stop picking so they heal completely - so that the scar is all that remains. 

Don't pick your scab.

I've noticed in being part of a church community that people have their favourite scabs to pick at - it starts with the choice of biscuit, the choice of hymns, the way things are done, the steps we are taking forward, our particular view of theology, our deep held beliefs that we are reluctant to challenge, our theological bugbear...... some of these things needed to be removed completely, some simply healed over, some actually left to flourish - but the problem we have is that we keep picking at them because it feels familiar and quite nice to pick a scab and make it bleed again so we don't have to look forward to the next hill we need to run up (or down) to get to the next place that God is taking us. 

Don't pick your scab.

I've been involved a lot in discussions about the future lately - as part of the wider Baptist family, as a Methodist circuit, as a college, as a church and as just me and one thing that has struck me is that however big the decisions that we are making we all have those scabs that at the right moment we pick at, make bleed and stop us in our tracks. 

I've decided in the last few months that I'm going to stop picking at mine. I'm also going to try and stop other people trying to pick at mine too (although that is a little bit harder). If less people picked at their own and others scabs the journey would become so much less messy (or different kind of messy) and we might actually get somewhere. 

Don't pick your scab. Just stop it..... stop.... it.....  

"I’m not saying that I have this all together, that I have it made. But I am well on my way, reaching out for Christ, who has so wondrously reached out for me. Friends, don’t get me wrong: By no means do I count myself an expert in all of this, but I’ve got my eye on the goal, where God is beckoning us onward—to Jesus. I’m off and running, and I’m not turning back."              Philippians 3:12-14 (MSG)

Journey From Old to New

I'm enjoying the last few weeks of working part time before I get back to college by trying to make sure I get some time off more than the one day I normally have off. I've lost the guilt complex I had at the beginning of the summer about working too little and have begun to relax and have more time to just enjoy what is going on around me. I love lazy days when I can sit and watch and just simply be. 

I've been thinking a lot about the journey from old into new. On Sunday we had 'Pie and Praise' - partly inspired by somebody in the congregation who told me how much she valued the old hymns as they helped shape her faith when she was younger, and partly inspired by the people who are so passionate about the history of the Baptists and Methodists in Ramsbottom. We looked at some things that had been stored by people in the church including many many old photos. As a family history geek I love knowing where things came from - where I and the people around me originated from and what made things happen to become what or who they are today. 

Today I went to Hardcastle Crags. There is an old mill that sits above Hebden Bridge. It is the only National Trust property that is self sufficient in terms of creating its own energy and dealing with its own waste. It is a beautiful place. What fascinated me most was the journey that had happened to get that place to where it is today. Once a mill, and when there was no need for it to be a mill it became a tourist destination with tea dances and shops and camping in the area. It then became derelict before it was made into a museum and beauty spot for people to enjoy today. The museum takes you through the history of the building, but also takes you into the future as you see how it has been made self sufficient. The historical use of water to generate power is combined with solar power to make electricity to serve the mill as it is today. 

History doesn't stop at a point where we think that it has stopped being beautiful. We don't stop at the point when the hymn writers died because we like their music, or at the point when the mill stopped producing cotton because we liked to use it...... history continues and we begin to make new history for the future. If our ancestors could see us now, worrying that in thinking forward we are moving too far away from the history that took us to this place, they would tell us just to get on with it and not worry about taking risks and doing things differently, because they did, and although they did not necessarily like it at the time, they see that now it was a good thing as history evolved and we became who we are today.

God has the power to turn where we are upside down and to make beautiful what was once ugly. We've got to let go, stop clinging onto the pew in front for dear life and let him do it - the time is now, not tomorrow. That's why we are where we are today - because throughout history, pioneers of faith have let go and let God.

I want my journey to be a journey. I don't want to be in a stagnant pool where the surroundings might be familiar, but the future is the same. I want my journey to be to places where the future is uncertain, yet is filled with the blessings of God. I want to be able to look back and learn, but I don't want that to stop me from looking forward and seeing God do new things. If I ever stop and look too comfortable I would hope that someone would kick me and remind me that the time for change never goes away..... keep journeying. 

"So we are not giving up. How could we! Even though on the outside it often looks like things are falling apart on us, on the inside, where God is making new life, not a day goes by without his unfolding grace. These hard times are small potatoes compared to the coming good times, the lavish celebration prepared for us. There's far more here than meets the eye. The things we see now are here today, gone tomorrow. But the things we can't see now will last forever."                  2 Corinthians 4:16-18 (MSG)