Good Old Plan B

Anyone else ever get big-time tired of always having to resort to Plan B?  And does your Plan A seem the best possible conclusion, and you’re really ticked because now you have to rely on a secondary plan?

Yeah!  Me too!  My life seems to be a spectacular series of Plan Bs.

The latest one about flipped me off the cliff!

To summarize- A depositing error (mine) at the bank resulted in my money being deposited in someone else’s account, but thanks to my ADD I lost the receipt.  Two kind, diligent folk at the bank spent 45 minutes trying to find my money.  No go…and that’s because it turns out I was giving them the wrong information.

Finally went in with PLAN C!  New information!  Result?

• Problem quickly solved
• Bank rectified the whole mess and I got my money back
• Bank folk learned a whole new set of skills
• …I had a monumental belief issue that needed to get resolved!

Results of My Plan B

Sometimes Plan Bs are the springboards for helping us to deal with our own inner issues.  Maybe that’s what Plan Bs are all about!

Here’s where this Plan B took me.

After mentally flagellating myself for losing the receipt, I begged for Divine help.

Yes I did.  As if, in the course of human history, my propensity for losing things is of cosmic importance.

Not getting any direct guidance, I concluded in my frantic state, that maybe some of the smarter theologians were correct and that God doesn’t personally relate to humans- and I began to find all kinds of logical reasons and conclusions why this was so.

All of which played total havoc with my mind.

Then- After Plan B/C worked, I exited the bank and stopped dead in my tracks with an AHA moment.

Maybe all my Plan Bs are growth moments; times to realize there ARE alternate solutions, some even better than originally planned.

But that wasn’t my big AHA!

My real insight had to do with the nature of God.

You know how you sometimes KNOW things, but it takes an event to flush them fully into consciousness?   AHA!

What Does God’s Name Mean?

In the book of Exodus, Moses says to God, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?”

God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.”  And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel, ‘I AM’ has sent me to you.’”

The Hebrew words in Exodus 3:14 , “I AM THAT I AM” should more accurately be translated “I will be what I will be” or as Rotherham translates it, “I will become whatsoever I may become.”  By using the translation “I will become whatsoever I may become,” we see the relationship of this phrase to Yahweh – “He who becometh.”  They both use the word “become.” It was God’s way of assuring and pledging to Moses and Israel that God would become whatever they needed Him to become.  Chicago Bible Students

Now imagine this translated as I WILL BE WHAT I WILL BE.  Future tense and contingent on what???

Well… that got me to thinking…

Maybe God is to us as we need God to be, being for each as each requires or desires.  No one can ever know the true nature of God.  We surmise, and speculate, postulate, and proclaim, but the fullness of the Divine is unknowable.

“We are finite beings, and God is infinitely greater than any thoughts we can contain about divine reality in our wondrous but tiny minds”. Miroslav Volf

But supposing this-

If you seek a god of mercy, caring and love- that’s who God will be for you.

If you need order and justice or condemnation and punishment, then that is how God is to you.

If you see God as cosmic yet impersonal, so be it for you.

If you long for God to be in an intimate and personal relationship with you, then God is that- for you.

If you can’t be bothered with spiritual issues, then for you God will seem distant and uninvolved.

Because God WILL BE WHO GOD WILL BE!

How God Meets Us

So…We all believe in the same God, but through the lens of our own needs and compunctions. Not that our needs capture the true nature of God, but that God allows us each to define how we perceive God.

“Each and everyone one of us has our own sets of needs.

Some of us have financial needs, some physical needs.

Others of us have relational needs, or spiritual needs

• To the one who needs a listening ear He is the best Friend you could hope for.
• To the one who needs instruction He is the Teacher.
• To the one who needs strength He is the Almighty.
• To the one who needs direction He is the Shepherd.
• To the one who needs a place of refuge He is our Rock and Fortress.
• To the one who needs encouragement He is the Comforter.

Whatever it is that we need God to be in our life, God is.  Randy Barker

You are met wherever you are on your spiritual walk!

“God enters by a private door into each individual.”   Ralph Waldo Emerson

God doesn’t change- and remains whatever God is- through all eternity.

Constancy of Middle C

When Lloyd Douglas, author of The Robe, was a university student, he lived in a boarding house. Downstairs lived an elderly, retired music teacher, who was unable to leave his apartment.

Douglas said that every morning they had a ritual they would go through together.

He would come down the steps, open the old man’s door, and ask, “Well, what’s the good news?” The old man would pick up his tuning fork, tap it on the side of his wheelchair and say, “That’s middle C! It was middle C yesterday; it will be middle C tomorrow; it will be middle C a thousand years from now.

The tenor upstairs sings flat, the piano across the hall is out of tune, but that, my friend, is middle C!”

So- What Changes?

And though God is as unchangeable as middle C, what does change and is fluid, is our perception of God which shifts over our individual life-spans.

Karen Armstrong is quoted as saying, “Each generation has to create the image of God that works for it.”

People tend to add or take away from their understanding of God whatever they have absorbed from their upbringing, politics, race, gender, and morally binding habits, attitudes and customs of society.  And all are vulnerable to apprehending God in ways we would prefer God to be like, and in picturing God in human terms.

Ann Lamott has humorously commented, “You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out God hates all the same people you do.”

And many people, from Rousseau to Twain to Voltaire, are credited with the line: “God created man in his own image and man, being a gentleman, returned the favor.”

So What Are We To Conclude?

God is God.  No amount of imagining, or superficial proclaiming is ever going to capture or fully define God.  Consequently, we being human, only know how to somehow and in some small way to understand God in earthly, human terms.

And do you suppose that God doesn’t know and accept that?

But, of course!

So, God meets us where we are in our understanding and growth.

God will be who God will be.

But that doesn’t mean our spiritual journey is to remain static or stagnate.  We are meant to push beyond where we are at present- and in the stretching and growing we will discover that our imaginings about God’s nature will expand and enlarge as well.

Consider This-

What if:

• In seeking to feel better, we are avoiding God’s moving us toward growth?
• In seeking God always as light, we are missing God as darkness?
• In avoiding change, we are missing God’s plea for us to move into the wonder of some unknown possibility?
• In only perceiving God as Father, we are missing out on seeing all the other infinite aspects and dimensions of God?
• In looking for God in the grand event, we are overlooking God in the small and most unremarkable places of our lives?
• In running from death, in trying to hold onto life, we are utterly missing the presence and power of God in aging, in letting go, in dying itself, in moving graciously along with God?
• In perceiving God always in that which is sacred, holy, otherworldly, religious, we are failing to see God in the secular, this world, the office, the home, the classroom, our day-to- day relationships, work and play?
• In seeking God always in the Bible, we are missing God in the newspaper?

What if simply to be with God, live with God, know God, love God, is enough?

Might it be that being human is simply being with God- and seeking and finding God’s presence in all reality?  Being alive is both a terror and a wonder, and an adventure in living, and in dying…

Take Action

Have you ever considered what your own concept of God says about you- Your desires? Your needs? Your current place on this spiritual journey?  And did you ever wonder about who influenced you and how you got to your current ideas?

Might I suggest that spending some time addressing this could be both revealing and eye-opening- while at the same time giving you a deeper glimpse into your own inner workings.

A challenging venture, to be sure!

Try this…What do you think this quote means???