(Un)Planned Detours

“The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps" (Proverbs 16:9). As Jesus’ earthly father discovered, this is just another way of saying that when your plans are detoured and redirected, you find out who’s really charting the course.

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Nazareth. It felt good to Joseph to be back home. The same old market and the same old merchants. The same old neighbors with the same old complaints. The same old synagogue and the same old rabbi. 

Oddly, though, the normalcy felt a bit strange after the unexpected adventures of the past couple of years. What an odyssey this simple Galilean carpenter had been on.

It had all started with Mary’s world…

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A Stable of Desperation

The first Christmas night was a holy night. But it was not a silent night. All was not calm. After walking a hundred miles, Joseph arrived in an overcrowded Bethlehem, with a wife in advanced labor. And “there was no place for them in the inn” (Luke 2:7).

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“We are completely full. We can’t take another person.”

“Please, my wife is about to give birth! We’ll take anything with a little privacy.”

Compassion and exasperation mixed in the fatigued innkeeper’s eyes. His tired hand rubbed over his head. “Look, I would give you our own quarters, but we’ve already given them to others. People are in every nook and cranny. There is no room, especially to hav…

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A Painful Decision

When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. (Matthew 1:18-19)

Joseph felt a twinge of anxiety. He sensed something unusual in Mary’s request that he come.

When he arrived she was standing under the tree near her father’s house where, as a betrothed couple, they were given some supervised privacy. Mary wasn’t herself. She was staring at the ground. She seemed burdened.

“Mary, is something wrong?”

She looked up at him intensely. “Joseph… I’m pregnant.”

A blast of shoc…

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Jesus guides us in many different ways. Sometimes he makes the next step clear as day. Other times, like Peter discovered in John 21:1-14, it feels like we’re left to muddle through, only to find that Jesus was leading through our muddling.

“I am going fishing.”

Peter didn’t know what else to do. The past few weeks had been indescribably intense with the nightmare of Jesus’ crucifixion and the ineffable wonder of his resurrection.

Now he was sitting with Thomas, Nathanael, James, John, and two others. They were just waiting. It was disorienting. Jesus wasn’t there and he hadn’t told them what to do next.

Peter used to know just what to do: prepare the nets and boat, go fishing, tak…

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There never seems to be enough time to do the things you want to do once you find them.

This line is from Jim Croce’s song, “Time In a Bottle,” in which he also writes:

If I could save time in a bottle, the first thing that I’d like to do
Is to save every day till eternity passes away, just to spend them with you.

Jim wrote this in 1972 for his 1 year-old son. Jim knew he didn’t have an eternity with his boy. But he had less than he knew. On September 21, 1973, Jim died in a plane crash. He was 30 years old.

We know time is short. But it’s shorter than we know. We don’t have time to waste.

That’s why Moses wrote Psalm 90. Our lives are “like grass that is renewed in the morning…

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For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope (Romans 8:20).

Are you tired of fighting futility? Evil and disorder relentlessly throw wrenches into the gears of your life. What’s the point?

For God, the point is hope. Which is very strange. Futility and hope are not friends. The former tends to kill the latter. Humans can’t make them both be true at the same time. But God can.

Futility — Turned on Its Head

Futility means things fall apart. It means that what begins fresh and green and thrilling in the morning of life and love and new ventures fades and withers in its evening (Psalm 90:5-6). People die, families disintegrate…

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“Lord, what about this man?” (John 21:21)

Peter asked Jesus this question when he learned that Jesus had ordained very difficult things for Peter’s future. So Peter wanted to know about John. Was Jesus going to give John a better deal?

Jesus responded, “If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you? You follow me” (John 21:22)! In other words, How I deal with John is not your concern, Peter. If I deal differently with him, you must trust me. I want you to be faithful to the calling I have given you.

“What is that to you?” This is a question you and I need to be asked every day. Because how God deals with other people is frequently of excessive concern to us.

The …

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Mary therefore took a pound of expensive ointment made from pure nard, and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair (John 12:3).

Judas simply could not fathom Mary’s ridiculous decision.

During dinner she had just dumped all that rare perfume on Jesus’ feet! Almost a year’s wages now puddled on the dirty floor. Completely wasted!

“Why was this ointment not sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor?”

How noble. But Judas wasn’t concerned for the poor. “He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief and being in charge of the moneybag he used to help himself to what was put into it” (John 12:6). Judas was concerned for Judas.

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“Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (Ephesians 5:25).

Jesus died for the church. But for Jesus the church is not an institution like Yale University or Apple or The United Way, where the corporation has the brand value and the people who populate it are an anonymous (and largely replaceable) mass, except for a few VIPs. Jesus did not die for an institution. He died for individuals.

The church isn’t even a republic like The United States of America. Jesus didn’t die for a republic. He died for persons.

Jesus died for persons with names, faces, personalities, disabilities, histories, and sins. He did that because he loves each person. Every sin Jesus bore on the cross …

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She hobbled into the synagogue to hear the healing rabbi. Hoping against hope. You see, she “had had a disabling spirit for eighteen years. She was bent over and could not fully straighten herself” (Luke 13:10-11).

Eighteen years. How many of her tears had God collected in his bottle (Psalm 56:8)? How many of her prayers in his bowl (Revelation 5:8)?

Eighteen years of suffering. The slow burn of chronic pain had worn on her soul. She had suffered the loss of capacities she once took for granted. She had suffered the indignities of others’ pity and disgust. She had suffered their suspicion that her body was bent under the weight of divine judgment.

Did she know that her affliction wa…

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