"DEAR GOD, YOU SURE DON'T ACT LIKE YOU'RE ALIVE" - Day 45

Day 45 – three analogies

Let’s say there was a little house inhabited by American allies on Normandy beach when D-day broke out. In fact, let’s suppose that the family in this unfortunate beach cottage consisted of the son, daughter-in-law, and grandchildren of the head captain of the invading American fleet…  –GREGORY A. BOYD

When they are making a Persian rug, they put it up vertically on a frame, and little boys, sitting at different levels, work from the wrong side of it.  –LESLIE D. WEATHERHEAD       

The picture in my mind is that of children playing beside a tiny stream that runs down a mountainside to join a river in the valley below.  –LESLIE D. WEATHERHEAD

                                                                                                        

Another common way to describe the purpose of God is to say, “It is God’s will.” Purpose and will, though not synonyms, are linked inseparably. You cannot have a purpose and carry it out without exposing your will. Nor can you express your will without somewhat revealing your purpose. And God’s will is no different. In and through it, His purpose is exposed. Simply stated, it is God’s will that His purpose be achieved.

Upon mentioning the will of God, however, a flood of accusations, questions, and misunderstandings immediately surface. How could this or that illness be God’s will? How could it ever align with His purpose? Is it His will for the innocent to suffer and the evil to prosper? If not, why doesn’t He act now to establish His will? And if God has a plan for you and me, why does His will for our lives seem so hidden? Why doesn’t He just write it in the sky in bold letters so that no doubt would remain? If He has a purpose for us, why do we so often fail to sense His direction?

To address these questions, let me refer you to three analogies that have been useful to me. Like all analogies, each attempts to relate in everyday terms a transcendent truth, and each falls somewhat short of its goal. But each, as is true of all good analogies, brings us closer to the truth that we seek. It is with this hope that these three are offered to you today, along with the prayer that they will encourage, enlighten, and inspire you as much as they have me.

The first is from Gregory A. Boyd, professor of theology at Bethel College in St. Paul, Minnesota. He has a M.Div. from Yale Divinity School and a Ph.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary. What’s more, he is an ordained minister and the preaching pastor at Woodland Hills Church in St. Paul. An author of several books, he relates in one of them the following analogy about God’s will and purpose:

Let’s say there was a little house inhabited by American allies on Normandy beach when D-day broke out. In fact, let’s suppose that the family in this unfortunate beach cottage consisted of the son, daughter-in-law, and grandchildren of the head captain of the invading American fleet. There they were, caught in the crossfire of this terrible battle. Let’s say they had a radio line with this captain and could radio their requests to him during the battle. They told him they were being hit with enemy fire and with American fire. They told him they were wounded and needed supplies, hungry and needed food, etc.

Now the captain cares a great deal about his son and family and would like to answer every one of their requests. But, at the same time, there is a larger battle to fight, thousands of other lives to consider, and the outcome of this important battle which must be of preeminent importance. So sometimes the captain can meet the son’s requests. But other times, given the strategic warfare of the enemy, he cannot. And perhaps sometimes their requests are not even to their own advantage given the course the battle is taking.

But the unfortunate family in the beach cottage doesn’t have this broader perspective. They only know that the captain is on their side, that their requests are heard and are taken into account, and that sometimes their requests are granted and sometimes not. But they, lacking his strategic perspective, have no idea why this is the case. They don’t have a purview of the whole battle. Their perspective is limited to the tiny windows in the cottage.

This is, I think, analogous to our relationship with God... There are undoubtedly billions of variables that go into God’s moment by moment interaction with the world. There is His overall plan for humankind and for the cosmos. There is the necessary degree of freedom of each individual, human and angelic, with which to contend. There is the sheer number of opposing forces and allied forces available to consider. And so on. And we know less than nothing about any of this! Our perspective is extremely myopic. We know infinitely less about the cosmic warfare we are involved in than that family in the cottage knew about the battle they were caught in.

In truth, we can only know this one thing: our Captain is in love with us, He wants the best for us, He’s on our side, He hears and is influenced by our petitions, and when it’s possible to promote the good and avoid pain, He does it. But in warfare this is simply not always possible—even for God—so long as He sticks to His highest agenda which is love and therefore freedom...

“We now see through a very dark glass,” the Bible says. But, I believe, we can see enough to know that our requests are taken into account and to continue believing in the goodness and wisdom of the Captain we're talking to.¹

The second analogy comes from the pen of Leslie D. Weatherhead, a great British preacher of the mid-1900s. He served for years, beginning in 1936, as minister of City Temple in London and became a pioneer in the field of pastoral psychology. In his thought-provoking book Why Do Men Suffer?, he offers this to help us understand the difference in our perspective and God’s perspective:

When they are making a Persian rug, they put it up vertically on a frame, and little boys, sitting at various levels, work on the wrong side of it. The artist stands on the right side of the rug, the side on which people will tread, and shouts his instructions to the boys on the other side. Sometimes a boy will make a mistake in the rug... What happens when the boy makes a mistake?... Quite often the artist does not make the little boy take out the wrong color. If he is a great enough artist, he weaves the mistake into the pattern.

Is there not here a parable of life? You and I are working on the wrong side of the rug. We cannot watch the pattern developing. I know I put in the wrong color very often. I put in black when God meant red, and yellow when he meant white; and the other workers with whom I make my rug make mistakes too. Sometimes I am tempted to say, “Is there Anybody on the other side of the rug; am I just left to make a mess of my life alone? Is there Anybody there?” Then I realize that instead of making me undo it all or letting my life’s purpose be ruined, God puts more in. I wonder if sometimes he alters the pattern? It isn’t what it might have been; but because he is such a great Artist I haven’t quite spoiled everything. So, at the end, when he calls me down off my plank and takes me round to the other side, I shall see that just because he is such a great Artist, no mistakes of mine can utterly spoil the pattern; nothing can divert his purpose ultimately, or finally spoil his plan. If only I will work with him, “simply trusting every day,” I think one day I shall find my mistakes and my calamities and my distress and my failures and all my pain woven into the pattern, and I shall say, “It is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes.”²

Today’s third analogy is also from Weatherhead. During a series of sermons to his congregation on the will of God, he offered to them and to us an easy-to-remember portrait of God’s unrelenting will and purpose:

The picture in my mind is that of children playing beside a tiny stream that runs down a mountainside to join a river in the valley below. Very little children can divert the stream and get fun out of damming it up with stones and earth. But not one of them ever succeeds in preventing the water from reaching the river at last.

In regard to God we are very little children. Though we may divert and hinder his purposes, I don’t believe we ever finally defeat them; and, though the illustration doesn’t carry us so far, frequently our mistakes and sins are used to make another channel to carry the water of God’s plans to the river of his purpose

What is meant by the omnipotence of God is that he will reach his ultimate goal, that nothing of value will be lost in the process, however man may divert and dam up the stream of purpose nearest him, and that God—if he cannot use men as his agents—will, though with great pain to himself and to themselves, use them as his instruments. “I know that thou canst do all things, and that no purpose of thine can be restrained.”³

Taken together, these three analogies drive home to me in unmistakable fashion the following truths: (1) that God loves me and has a purpose for me; (2) that I, in my present circumstance, cannot completely understand the unfolding of His purpose; (3) that God is able to weave the circumstances of my life, whatever they may be, into His purpose; (4) that His purpose cannot be thwarted, no matter who or what may try to hinder it; and (5) that one day, on the other side, everything I’m going through will make sense and will fit perfectly.

Somehow this has been just enough to calm my fears and dry my tears. It has been just enough, in the midst of my questions and pain, to bring into focus God’s purpose and to energize my service for Him. Such a life of service, I am confident, is the will of God for me.    

¹Leslie D. Weatherhead, Why Do Men Suffer? (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1936), 134-5.

²Gregory A. Boyd, Letters from a Skeptic, 66-8.

³Leslie D. Weatherhead, The Will of God (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1972), 49-51.

Daily Quotations

Gregory A. Boyd, Letters from a Skeptic, 66-8.

Leslie D. Weatherhead, Why Do Men Suffer?, 134-5.

Leslie D. Weatherhead, The Will of God, 49-51.