Someone returning to the storm-ravaged
coast sent me a picture of debris cut from the road.
"Not until he (Jonah) received a divine interruption did he develop a life story that made a stamp on history,” Priscilla observes.
“Did you see it?” she asked.
I did. In the middle of all that
stormy mess, a heart shape in the tree trunk.
In a new Bible study by Priscilla Shirer we’re doing on Jonah, we’re talking about messes, too.
Like what can happen when God gives
us instruction as He did when he told Jonah, the prophet to Israel, to prophesy
to Nineveh, and instead, we like Jonah, immediately head in the opposite
direction.
Ticket for one to Tarshish,
please.
We can think we have our lives
all mapped out as Jonah did, and then an unexpected interruption comes and like
him, we start fighting against it.
It’s right about then, that God
might invite us to wonder if what seems like an interruption might really be
divine intervention.
“Are you ready to get swallowed
by a fish called Grace?” Priscilla asks.
The answer to that might
sometimes be, “No, I’m not. I want my regular life back, the life I had planned.”
We can put our plans ahead of God’s
will. But even then―God’s heart is in what seems like a mess.
"Not until he (Jonah) received a divine interruption did he develop a life story that made a stamp on history,” Priscilla observes.
Way beyond what we have planned,
God has plans for us.
“God can do
anything, you know—far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in
your wildest dreams! He does it not by pushing us around but by working within
us, his Spirit deeply and gently within us” (Ephesians 3:20-21 The Message).
God’s heart is
in the mess, our mess to bring about more than our ability to imagine.
Priscilla again.
“Most biblical people who made a lasting mark in Christianity had a point in their
lives where they stood at a crossroad. They had to decide to yield to divine
intervention at the cost of their own plans or continue on their own path
instead.”
So, wherever we
are in our journey, whatever mess we may be in, we can always adjust to follow
God, because as you may have heard, his heart is in the mess.