God’s Purpose

A colleague in a text study commented about God and the future saying, God must be a God of infinite contingency plans. The comment remains with me. It trusts God has plans for us and this world, and that God also has contingency plans because of humans acting otherwise, even contrary to God’s plans. There’s something gracious about this. In the story of Abram, God tells them to go and promises to bless them so they will be a blessing to all the families of the earth. And Abram at 75, and Sarai and Lot, go. That’s amazing. But the journey will have many twists and turns, stops and starts, and in a sense, will rely on contingency plans again and again. Some might prefer to say it was all God’s plan all along, and that works, too. But the idea of God adjusting plans in relationship to our human responses and even failings, all still toward God’s good purpose to bless all humanity, that seems right, too.

As we journey toward the cross, is it possible that we witness the greatest contingency plan of all, God’s raising Jesus from death to life? And doesn’t that hold the blessing of God’s doing the same in every circumstance of our lives and this world?

God, bless our lives to your purpose for the sake of the whole world. Amen. — LM