Originally posted Jan. 4, 2012, at Faith Formation. Republished with permission of the author.
If you have ever had an elder in your household, particularly one born before 1930, you have probably heard the phrase, “the Lord willing,” tacked to almost any statement of intent.
I remember dear old Aunt Catherine, who would qualify all plans, whether they were traveling across town or simply creating a luscious batch of her homemade jam, with the statement “the Lord willing.”
“I will see you tomorrow, Lord willing.” “This is gonna be a great meal, Lord willing.”
Aunt Catherine never believed that her hopes or plans were concrete — the only thing that was certain for her was that nothing would unfold for her unless God willed it to be so.
These days we have so many resources at our fingertips that help us to predict a trend or to guide our strategic planning. With the aid of PowerPoint or Excel we can look at patterns and precedents, and develop fairly good guesses about how our assets and deficits can be managed.
Doppler radar equips us (or agitates us, depending upon your perspective) by looking at weather patterns days in advance. We live as people who are tempted to consider themselves omniscient.
Not so! James 4:13-17 reminds us of the fleeting nature of what we identify as “certain.”
We and our notions are like mist, right?
The only thing that assures permanence is God’s will embedded in our plans and actions.
In many congregations a new year means a new schedule of meetings. As with all meetings there will be questions, perhaps debate — important parts of discernment, which leads to voting.
As for me, when a vote is at hand, I want to remember my Aunt Catherine’s consistent words: “Lord willing.”
Find a link to Pamela Czarnota’s blog Faith Formation at Lutheran Blogs.
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very good article and one we should all follow... God wil ling. The only question I would raise is, is it God's will embedded in our plans or our plans embedded in God's will. I suspect the answer is .... yes. Both and. In either case the danger comes when we assume God's will to be our will. So keep walking with God and if today didn't go right, tomorrow we will get another chance..... God willing!! I love that..... God willing!!!
"After Nathan had gone home, the LORD struck the child that Uriah’s wife had borne to David, and he became ill. David pleaded with God for the child. He fasted and spent the nights lying in sackcloth on the ground. The elders of his household stood beside him to get him up from the ground, but he refused, and he would not eat any food with them. On the seventh day the child died." 2 Samuel 12:15-18
Peter, not sure what the story of the loss of David and Bathsheba's child has to do with the story of "God Willing." Is it God's will the child died? That seems to raise a few other questions about God. Is it an element of story or do you believe God strikes children to punish parents today? Not sure I see any Gospel in this.
We assume that God's will is always good for us. It's not, and when it's not, it's lethal to us. Trying to avoid that is like saying Christ's resurrection means it doesn't matter that He died in the first place. God is not always willing, and the original phrase recognizes that.
I would go further than saying it is God's will that the child died and say that God killed the child. God kills sinners every day. As Luther says, the fact that we do not suffer 10 calamities an hour itself is a testament to God's grace. Nor is the Promise that you won't die, but that you will have eternal life, freely given on Christ's account. In this way, the phrase also acknowledges acceptance that if God is not willing, it's still less than we deserve.
I appreciate the discussion. I think that trying to deem what is going on as "good for us" or "lethal to us" limits the arena. Since we can't KNOW the specific ways that what is occurring in our time and space is woven into God's mysterious plan, it is sufficient for us to trust that God's will WILL unfold (and is and has). Setting our focus upon the Cross as individuals and as congregations assures us of ongoing humility and trust... and then we do the best that we can in our imperfection to "do" the right thing -- glorifying God and serving others in His precious Name, trusting in God's abundant grace and mercy to set us "right" in the end.
The focus on the cross is that God's judgement for us is death whether we "do the best we can in our imperfection" or not. I think we minimize that today and want to downplay God's wrath or claim that wrath is never God's will. Downplaying wrath trivializes the difficulty of trusting God in the face of that wrath, whether that wrath is apparent as a child being stricken, a loved one with cancer, a car accident, loss of a job, failure in school/job, etc, etc. Grace is something that we can receive long before the end and reconciles us to God in the face of suffering.
Do we come to Christ because we fear the wrath of God? Or does Christ come to us in love to reconcile the righteous God to an unrighteous humanity? The threat of hell and condemnation from sin has been overcome by the gospel of grace. I don't think trusting the good news of the gospel is "downplaying the wrath of God." Luther hated the fear-tactics of those selling indulgences under the threat of God's wrath. I don't think people need to be told that suffering and death are signs of God's wrath. People already believe that about God. What they don't believe or hear enough is that God has made peace with us through the blood of the cross. We are no longer God's enemies. If it is God's will that people die in sin and go to hell because of the inheritance of Sin, then the cross is useless. Your sins are forgiven. "God willing", we spend today praising and thanking God for God's grace and we get about the ministry of reconciliation to which we are called.
Matt,
I'm not talking about the threat of hell and condemnation from sin so much as the reality of hell and sin on this earth. I don't mean to imply that we can get to Christ because we fear the wrath of God. We can't do anything about God's wrath, but that doesn't make it any less real. It is from this very real wrath that the Gospel saves us. Nor does that Gospel keep us from dying, but promises life after death. Just so, 'your sins are forgiven' is a meaningless statement to someone who sees no sin.
oh my, Peter, you just took me back to my young adulthood (a few years ago) when the confession at the beginning of the worship service was a part when I simply stayed silent. It was when I was a visitor to the church rather than a member in any authentic sense. Yep, I was one of those who, being a basically nice person, thought I had nothing to confess. But my niceness was towards others, and was sheer arrogance, because I believed I was, on my own, a "nice" person. Then I finally got it: we have sinned against YOU in THOUGHT WORD AND DEED.
We sin against God ... always.... Perhaps as "nice" people, we usually don't hurt or offend others... but still, we always sin, by what we have done or have left undone.
Thank you for the reminder...