Adventures with my bike

I was in the forest, following the 7 year old on the bike path.  The hill was steep and his little brother struggled up it.  I was tagging behind, ostensibly not to lose the kids- after all, watching them was my responsibility- but the honest truth was that this hill was about as hard for me as it was for the four year old.  He stood up on the pedals, leaning in to keep going.  

When I was a kid, we lived at the top of a steep, gravel drive way.  It wasn't ideal for riding bikes.  So I never really progressed to the "look Mom!  No hands!" stage of bike riding.  I'm getting there now, but balancing while standing is a feat I still haven't mastered.  

Despite that, my bike has become one of my new best friends.  The fog creeps over the river in the morning, and frost paints the bushes white.  My ears freeze, especially since I misplaced my hat.  I steer to avoid the potholes, and smile as I pick up speed on the hill right before I reach campus.  My half hour walk has been shortened to a just over 10 minute bike ride.  

On a drizzly day, when I finally arrive I'm slightly damp, my hair frizzy.  Riding in the rain is hard.  I blink, trying to keep the raindrops out of my eyes.  I momentarily consider wearing swimming goggles when biking in the rain, and then wonder if maybe a hat with a visor might work just as well and not look quite as strange.

We laughingly call ourselves a "bike gang" when there's a group of us together.  We ride through the town square in the dark.  It's empty this late at night, and the group of us all headed home in the same direction call back and forth to each other as we ride through the silent streets.  There's something magical about riding at night.  When everything around you is obscured, you feel like you're gliding, almost flying in the dark.

Unfortunately, with the cold comes ice and snow, and I think I'm still too new to the world of cycling to brave those conditions on the way to school each morning.  The bus might just replace my bike for a season.  But for now, in these last few days of fall, I'm still enjoying this new bicycle life style. 

Falling off the tight rope

I used to think of God's will as a tight rope: you're either on it, or off it, and staying balanced is a treacherous journey of discernment, where any mis-step will send you tumbling.  And if you want God's best for your life, you have to work to get back on that tightrope, because it stretches away into God's perfect future for you, and there you are, on the ground, stuck with plan B.

When I'm thinking this way, decisions are terrifying.  If I don't discern God's will correctly and instead I (take this job, move to this place, date this person) and it wasn't REALLY God's will, then I'll be stuck in plan B.  I start to stress, on one hand, that I will fail God, and on the other that he will fail me.  If I choose wrong, he won't be able to use me as he planned to.  Life will go on, but I won't meet that one person who was going to tell me about that particular mission's organization that would have been the perfect fit for me and I would have changed hundreds of children's lives.  He also won't be able to bless me as he planned to.  I also won't meet that amazing man that God had planned for me to marry.  Oops.  I would have met him at that other job.  Or in a different country.  Or at a different school.  Too bad I heard God wrong, and now I'm stuck with plan B.  Unless of course, I can figure out where I misheard, back track as it were, and get myself back on the tight rope.  Then maybe I can still have the "best" plan.

How small my view of God can be, and how large my view of myself.  Did I really think that I could fail God?  That me, one tiny, insignificant creation in a world of 7 billion, could make a choice that would upset the course of God's divine plan?  That with my one decision, I would lessen his ability to work through me?  Do I really think that God's grace is so small that it only covers me when I'm following down a pre-made path that I can't see and nothing but faith and guesswork can ever make out?  Do I not know that God is everywhere?  That he redeems all our mistakes, is with us always, even to the end of this age, and lavishes his love on us?

I'm reworking my understanding of God's will.  When God put Adam and Eve in the garden, he gave them choices and parameters.  "And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” (Genesis 2:16 & 17) I'm beginning to think, that in much the same way, God gives us choices and parameters now.  "He has showed you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?" (Micah 5:7)  “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment.  And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself." (Matthew 22: 37&38)  Does my decision flow from my love of God?  Does it demonstrate love to my neighbor?  Is it a decision that embraces love, mercy, and justice?  Because if it does, I think it's a decision that I'm free to make without agonizing whether or not it's God's will.  Perhaps that seems obvious, but for me, it hasn't always been.  It still isn't.  I feel like I need a special confirmation, a special blessing, in order to proceed.  Maybe because of my personality.  Maybe because of things I was taught in church (until you have "perfect peace" that a decision is from God, you should continue to seek him. . . how does that even work if a decision has a deadline and not making a decision is the same as deciding "no"?).  Maybe because of verses like this one, "And your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, “This is the way, walk in it,” when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left." (Isaiah 30:21).

As I've been trying to come to a Biblically sound view of what it means to seek God's will, I can't really bring to mind any soul-searching, agonizing times of desperately seeking God's will in the Bible (Jesus, at Gethsemane is the only time that comes to mind.  And there he already kenw God's will, but was asking if there was any other way, that's a bit different than evaluating options and choosing the one God approves).  Yes, there are MANY times when God clearly speaks and directs someone to do something specific.  And there are times when God's people seek guidance for how to overcome specific problems.  But overall, I see a principle of honoring God with our lives and moving forward trusting that he will guide. "The steps of a man are established by the LORD, when he delights in his way; though he falls, he shall not be cast headlong, for the LORD upholds his hand" (Psalm 37:23 & 24).  If you search the Bible with the term "God's will", you'll find that often it relates to general principles (it is his will for us to be holy, to give thanks, to be sanctified) or a general calling (it was his will for Paul to be an apostle).  Rarely is it written about a specific circumstance, and if it is, it isn't generally something that needs to be carefully discerned, but more likely revealed through circumstances (Paul writing, "I will come back if it is God's will." in Acts 18:21).

I've been trying to find out what the early church father's wrote about decision making and while my search has been cursory so far, I haven't really turned up much of anything.  And I'm wondering if this is the reason why, "increased control over one's own life- problems of choice- are typically upper-class phenomena in the previous generations" (Life Stories of Social Change J. P. Roos) Until recently, "discerning God's will" wasn't something that your average person had much cause to do.  All the major life decisions where it's easy to worry about making the wrong choice, were choices they didn't even truly have to make.  Your father was a farmer, you were a farmer.  You were apprenticed to someone as a child, that became your trade.  You were a woman, you would marry, bear children and keep house.   Even "choices" like marriage were less of a choice when marriage was a much more practical arrangement and much less of the romantic attachment it is seen as today.  So if they could take those steps without fearing that they would somehow unknowingly be disobedient to God, I think we can probably do the same. 

I'm not suggesting we not pray, and seek God's will.  I just think that maybe, just maybe, God is more interested in us becoming transformed into his image than he is with creating prescribed paths for each one of us that we have to figure out.  And I'm confident that my God can transform me anywhere, and use any circumstance for his glory and for my good.  So, I'm beginning to say sometimes, after praying and seeking God, "maybe this right now, is a choice God is allowing me to make, and it's all right to choose any of these options"  But it's hard to do.  Even as I realize that my decisions shouldn't be made in fear because "Perfect love casts out fear"I find myself returning to the "comfort" of old ways of thinking.  Discerning God's will doesn't require me to make a decision- it just requires me to hear God's voice.  He chooses, I obey. There's safety in that, despite the fear of "mishearing".   But choosing, somehow that's a bit scarier.  But there's joy and freedom in that too.  So for now, I'm trying to learn to walk the tightrope with more confidence, no longer fearing that I can fall off and "lose" God's will for my life (as long as I'm not in rebellion to what his word reveals), and rejoicing in the truth that "all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose." (Romans 8:28).  It's not MY choices that keep me on that tight rope after all.  It's the glorious grace of my wonderful savior.