When I was eight, a harried religious teacher, while trying to present a lesson, scared me by saying that my life had already been planned. She then passed out crayons and tried to ignore my waving hand.
I still remember how wrong her words tasted in my throat and my consternated and slightly frantic need to have her reword, and to say I had misunderstood her.
I waved my hand back and forth and finally spoke without invitation. “What if God decided I will be a murderer or a burglar,” I asked. “Don’t I get a say in it all?”
She wanted to move on and declared, “You can’t do anything about it. God has already decided what you are going to be. It’s done.”
Days later I walked home from school with my brother, past the house with the birds. I know now that the owner was a falconer. I know now why the birds were tied and hooded. I didn’t know then. And, I didn’t know that when my brother whistled at the birds, and they raised their wings, startled and flinched, that the falconer would get mad.
He screamed at us “Whistle again and I’ll let them lose; they’ll scratch your eyes out”
His mean and calculating response to what he perceived as our misbehavior stunned me. Though the birds would not have hurt us, we did not know that.
We believed that he knew the birds would hurt us if he let them fly. And he was going to let them fly at us anyway.
Is God already decided about us, about how we will turn out? Does he punish and threaten like the mean falconer?
Some people in this world will tell you what is good, what is bad, what is certain, what is Rule, and what God wants. Some people will tell you what to believe, how to vote, how to church-go, how to be faithful. Sometimes these people are very good, sometimes they aren’t.
Some of the bad ones will cajole you, humor you, woo you and if that does not work, they will judge you, scare you, threaten you, manipulate you. Some of them will attack you.
Brace yourself, always, against people who think they know what is best for you, and in their knowing, take yours.
God has something in store, but wants us to have a say, a choice, a will, a chance. God has a heart.
He knows what’s going down, rides with us, sees it all. He mourns as we hurt, bends around us as we grieve, waits as we flounder and ponder and give-up. God may know when a sparrow falls, but he doesn’t push birds from branches.
He may have the notes on each of our lives, but he allows editing and revising. We can redraft and re-do.
God waits quietly and speaks in your time. He seeks ears, leans towards them.
Brace yourself for the work of listening and for the painstaking waiting, mulling, moving into, that comes before discovery.
We arrive at truly big things slowly, even though they sometimes appear to drop before us in a spilled-bucket-rush of cold water and dang-where’d-that-come-from?
The decisions we make and the directions we take do not happen on a whim, in a sudden burst of brilliance, or in a vacuum. They begin as painstaking movements, small realizations, impacts, influences.They begin with listening to our hearts click in our chests in the quiet of night.
We have the soft power to change our lives, to change world, to decide what we want to do and be. And, when we mess it up badly, we get to suck-up a deep breath of determination and plunge back in for another go-around, only hopefully better this time. There’s always hope. And our failure is never predetermined.
What is ahead may be unclear, murky, a surprise – but it is yours. No God I know will hurt you on purpose, though of course He’ll see if you trip and fall.
And, He will help you up to start again, hope for you to surprise him, revel in your attempts, your striving, your reach toward bigger and better plans.
