I love it when things go well and everyone gets along. I’ll take smooth sailing over choppy seas any day. But if you’re like me, I wonder if this prevents us from experiencing the fullness of God’s plans for us.
We Presbyterians are often accused of considering 1 Corinthians 14:40 to be the most important verse in the Bible: “All things should be done decently and in order.” We prefer to cross all the t’s and dot all the i’s. At times we may focus more on the way things are done and pay less attention to what needs to be done.
The God who inspired the words of 1 Corinthians 14:40 is the same God who overturned the money-changers’ tables in the temple. That was hardly something done decently and in order! Scripture is full of times when God used times of disruption and chaos in order to transform people and nations. He uprooted Abraham and Sarah from their comfortable home in Haran to establish a new nation. He used Moses to lead the Israelites for forty years in a desert wasteland. He inspired prophets to speak jarring and sometimes offensive words to the nation’s leaders and people. He tossed Mary’s world upside-down by turning her into an unmarried pregnant teenager. He knocked Paul to the ground and struck him blind. The list goes on and on. Jesus himself did not accomplish our salvation by making sure not to make waves or offend anyone.
It’s no coincidence that our nation’s awareness of racial injustice and calls for action have arisen during the unprecedented disruption we continue to experience because of COVID-19. This may be yet one more example of God’s transforming activity happening during disturbing times.
I learned a similar lesson a few years ago when I earned a certificate in executive leadership. According to the experts, change only happens in an institution (such as the church) when there’s an optimal amount of discomfort. If everyone feels happy and comfortable, no one is motivated to do anything different. And if tensions are high and everyone is on edge, you can’t find the common ground you need to work together. But if we find that happy middle ground of just enough disruption and tension, we’ll want to act and we’ll be able to work together as we do so.
At our denomination’s recent national General Assembly, some people wanted to propose some positive and significant actions. But what they were proposing, and the way that they proposed it, didn’t align with the procedures in place to make the meeting run smoothly. So they were silenced, and we’ll never know if God wanted to use them to lead our denomination in a new direction. I wonder how many times and in what ways I, and we as a congregation, fail to follow God in bold and unsettling directions because we “just want everyone to be happy.”
Are you ready
for God to shake up your life?
