I have had lots of input since my last post (link here). Many, many folks have been insistent that, in Christ, failure is not an option–if (and this, I think, is a big IF) we are honoring His call and committing ourselves to His purposes. They have said (as I noted last time) that we do, indeed, live by faith and not by sight. They have reminded me that human perceptions and evaluations are inevitably incomplete…handicapped by a lack of data and obscured by the sinful nature that continues to blur the plans and purposes of God.
So maybe Gene Kranz was right (or, at least, the Apollo 13 screenwriter who had Kranz’s character say), “Failure is not an option.” I’m still not sure.
Perhaps it’s just vocational or existential angst. [Don’t you love the onomatopoeia of “angst”? Don’t you love the onomatopoeia of “onomatopoeia”?]
Anyway, perhaps it’s just vocational or existential or even life stage angst. I don’t know. I do know that the feeling of failure still hovers–faintly whispering like the revolving rotary wings of a black ops helicopter–just waiting to touch down with its rapid assault team to confirm my fears.
But I have been deeply appreciative of the encouragement. And that is definitely something. Really, definitely, something.
And I have been prompted to do what I have encouraged so many others to do when faced with hard questions for which there seem to be no easy answers. When faced with what I don’t know about the Christian life, I hearken back to what I do know.
I know this: God is good all the time (go ahead, you can toss back the response, “And all the time, God is good”). It’s worth reminding myself that the God we worship is not arbitrary nor capricious nor tantrum tossing nor ignorant of our circumstances and peccadillos. His goodness is who He is; His goodness is what He does; His goodness flows from His love; and His love is deeper, wider, and higher than we can comprehend.
I know this: God has resources–has them all, in fact. And, though those resources are most often arrayed just beyond our sight sense, that doesn’t mean they’re not there. It simply means that we don’t always get to see them. Sometimes we hardly ever get to see them. And maybe it’s the “hardly ever” that makes it seem, well, hard.
It was panic time. The ancient city of Dothan was surrounded by an Aramean army which had snuck in overnight. It was a manhunt…more accurately a prophet hunt. Elisha kept derailing the King of Aram and his plans to destroy the Israelites. The King thought he had a double agent among his people; but Elisha was giving the Israelites divine intel about Aramean troop movements. Aram’s King wanted Elisha…badly.
So Aram surrounded Dothan in the night. Not a good next morning for Dothanites (Dothanians?). Elisha’s servant was mess-your-pants scared. Elisha prays and asks God to show nervous servant boy what’s really there. Massed in the hills–masked to normal human sight–the Lord’s horses and chariots of fire surround the Aramean army.
That time, a servant of God got to see all that God had at His disposal.
I have to confess that I’m envious of Elisha’s servant. Not envious of his era with its lack of indoor plumbing and all things “i” (Phone, Pad, Pod, etc.). I am envious of that real time get-to-see-it experience in the middle of what looked like failure. Man, what a day!
But part of what marks that day as spectacular is that it was not the norm. To be sure, hanging around with Elisha heightened the probability that supercalifragilistic things would happen. But even by God’s-prophet-is-in-town standards (see ax, floating), the vision of the Army of God for the servant of God was blockbuster stuff.
But it was not the norm. The norm: we live by faith, not sight. Right?
And I highlight that on the list of things I have known about God and this Christian life. I live in the tension between what I know to be true about God and what I see happening around me. So, maybe Gene was right, “Failure is not an option.” But I have to confess I still hear the whispering blades of that black ops chopper. Sigh…
“Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (John 20:29).
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Categories: INSPIRATIONAL ARTICLES
Luke 21:36 "Watch therefore, and pray always that you may be counted worthy to escape all these things that will come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man."