Monday 4 May 2020

‘I wish that I knew then what I know now’ sings Rod Stewart in the song ‘Ooh La La’. How true that is, I thought wistfully to myself, as I reflected the other day on the somewhat torturously meandering path my earlier life had taken. In later years, it seems that we accumulate the wisdom that we often lacked through our youthful ones. These reflections also reminded me of how my youthful years were populated by many older wiser folks who tried, with limited success, to share their wisdom with me.

One of these, bearers of wisdom, was a lady who had spent many, many years as a Missionary Nurse out in Africa in, the then country of Malawi. She used to regale us all with stories and slide shows of her time in Africa. It was all so exotic and strange to me as a youngster from Scotland. She could even recall the legendary C.T. Studd, a pioneering Missionary of the Victorian Age, who she described as a being a saintly man who was very difficult to work with. (Look him up if you don’t know who he was.) One of Brenda’s favourite comments concerned people who were always wondering what God’s will was for them. She said that so many people, wasted so much time searching for God’s will, when it was right in front of them all the time. It was this inability, or refusal, to see what was in front of them that caused many never to discover God’s will for their lives. Needless to say, all of this went right over my head at the time.

If you are like me, you will recognise this inability to see what is in front of you. I spent many years believing that God’s will was to found somewhere else, doing something else, other than where I was. Perhaps it was youthful restlessness that took me a long time to grow out of. I could, possibly, flatter myself by likening this discontent to an Existential Crisis. It sounds good, at any rate. The truth is probably more uncomfortably prosaic. Surely, I thought during those times, God’s will has to more exciting and glamourous than this? After many years of fruitless searching, I remembered the words of Brenda. God’s will, more often than not, is to be found in the persons, the tasks, the situation and circumstances that are staring you in the face, today. Brenda, I now realise, was simply stating one of those perennial truths. If you cannot find God in what is in front of you, then you are unlikely to ever find God anywhere. I eventually came to see that, it is in faithfully attending to life as it comes to you in the daily ordinariness of existence, that we increasingly discern and grow into God’s will for us.

For us today, as we move into the seventh week of lockdown in this pandemic, sticking to the guidelines on social distancing, we can discover God’s will simply by attending to what we have to do today. Circumstances give us little choice in this. We have few options when it comes to changing what is in front of us. What we can change is our inner attitude and disposition. We can approach today with an attitude of disdain, resentment or boredom and allow a cloak of negativity to cover everything. Or, we can see everything that we do today, however seemingly small, familiar and repetitive it may be, as being God’s will for us. Jesus said that we are called to be faithful in the small things before, we can be entrusted with the greater things. It is the same with God’s will. As we come to see God’s will as being found in the myriad of small things that we do each day, so we come to discern the greater pattern of God’s will for our lives.

May today, with whatever it brings to you, be one of discovery, joy and thankfulness that day, by day, you are living out God’s will for you.