Thought for the Week – 26^th October 2020

Where God wants us – Luke 9: 57-62

^“As they were going along the road, someone said to Jesus, ‘I will follow you wherever you go.’  And Jesus said to him, ‘Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.’  To another he said, ‘Follow me.’ But he said, ‘Lord, first let me go and bury my father.’  But Jesus said to him, ‘Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.’  Another said, ‘I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home.’  Jesus said to him, ‘No one who puts a hand to the plough and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.’”

When the going gets tough, we all want to change things don’t we, and many of us are free to make those changes.  We can change where we live, the work we do, even our friends, we can resign and move on to other things.  Perhaps we do it too often!  Sometimes it’s the Lord’s will, at least we like to think it is!  Do we perhaps carry our conscience around in a wheelbarrow, pushing it the direction we want it to go.

It’s not the place where you are that is the important thing, it is the intensity of your presence there.  It’s not the situation that counts, what counts is that you are fully aware of the situation and looking hard at the place where you are, instead of wanting to work wonders elsewhere.

I suppose Jesus, in the stable at his birth, or on the cross at his death, might have wished he were elsewhere.  Yet he was just where God wanted him, right where God could use him to the full.  With us of course, is the dilemma that we don’t always have the comfort of knowing it at the time.  We do sometimes have the comfort of a clear conviction that we’re doing the right thing, but not always.  God’s time is different from ours.  When life is hard we hang on by faith, not proof, and there are times for all of us when anywhere else seems better than here and now.

As Christians I’m sure all of us, at some time in our lives, have spent our days wishing we were elsewhere and that our conditions were different.  But then we gradually come to understand, and accept, that we are where God has put us, and that this is where he wants us.

Our job then, should we wish to accept it, is to live and witness to his love and salvation here and now!

Prayer: 

Lord, if this is where you want me, I am content.  No, not quite true.  I wish it were.  All I can say, in honesty, is this:  if this is where I am meant to be then I’ll stay. And Lord, for all who hurt today, hurt more than me, I ask for strength, and that flicker of light, the warmth, that says you’re there beside me. Amen