Saturday, July 18, 2009

Change of Plans

A week ago today, I was supposed to be returning from Honduras. I was looking forward to some amazing worship experiences and the fellowship we had with our Honduran brothers and sisters, and how great it was to see friends that I’d made from previous trips. But the situation in Honduras – where political problems gave rise to enough instability and demonstrations that we were forced to postpone our team, kept our team from going.

But what not going to Honduras allowed me to do, was to connect with some people here, some people I probably would have missed had I been in Honduras. And it got me to think – how often do we miss things that are right in front of us, as we live our lives for something way out there? Don’t get me wrong, we need to plan. We also need to experience the world outside ourselves, other cultures, other perspectives and be willing to step outside our comfort zones to participate in God’s work. But isn’t it true, that sometimes as we plan, sometimes as we go we miss out on the present moment, we miss out on our present location, and those that are right around the corner?

Summer is a time where we are supposed to rest more, relax more and enjoy more. But all too often, at least in my life, it seems to only mimic the other 9 months out of the year – it’s lived way too full of plans for the future which don’t allow me to experience what God has for me here and now. Summer is supposed to be that time where we finally stop and smell the roses, we take vacations, which often require more planning and preparation to pull off than living our normal lives. I was recently told by a friend that his way to stay sane was to take a month of vacation in the summer. Maybe, like another good friend of mine said recently, we instead need to live lives at a pace which do not require us to run away from them in order to rest.

I share this at a very interesting moment - I'm about to officiate a wedding, I'm preaching tomorrow and after that we've got 3 events for the rest of the afternoon Sunday. But I'm working toward finding that rest in the midst of what I'm doing, here and now...

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I'm a type A personality and a J on the Myers Briggs so you can imagine how tough it is for me not to plan. Being married to an engineer doesn't help. I've noticed that I have missed some good things along the way because I was focused on "the plan." Now I am learning to not plan so much, to go with the flow sometimes, and to let life unfold. There's a lot of great experiences and relationships out there that are only experienced when we don't plan. One of God's ways of letting me know that I'm not in charge. :-)