UNANTICIPATED CIRCUMSTANCES
Do you suspect that some of your detours have been mysteriously and
providentially arranged?
A detour is one of
the most unpleasant surprises a traveler can encounter. In addition to being a
nuisance, it can be a serious inconvenience. During one of my trips to Walla
Walla, suddenly on highway 12 there was a detour took me out of my way about 10
miles. Immediately the blood pressure is boiling, you have a death grip on the
steering wheel. Maybe you have experienced this before?
Detours can be more
than highway inconveniences. Life's detours often necessitate major adjustments
and we must find a way to accept what we cannot change. Some detours have far
reaching consequences, and actually redirect our lives. But detours may also be
matters of choice, because they are found to be unanticipated opportunities for
service and love.
There is not a road
through life that does not have a detour on it somewhere. This is one of life's
frustrating realities, and every person should know it. Unavoidable changes
come to us all. Some are causes for celebration, of course. Others, however,
are not, and range from slightly disturbing to unspeakable pain in you know
what!
A visit to the
doctor may produce test results that permanently transform a person's
lifestyle. A fork-in-the-road decision by a young person may alter a whole
family's entire future. In such experiences we pray for serenity to accept what
must be endured because it cannot be changed. Unanticipated circumstances eventually
require all of us to revise our itineraries. Even Jesus found this to be true.
In Mark's Gospel,
Jesus is on the move. He is going from his home region of Galilee northward to
the coastal plain in Syria on the Mediterranean Sea. Tyre and Sidon was Gentile
country. Jesus was probably trying to distance himself temporarily from the
people who were crowding around him and the Jewish officials who found him such
a threat. What He may have intended as a journey to peaceful seclusion turned
out to have some unexpected detours.
Whatever His
personal agenda was in the region of Tyre and Sidon, Jesus was sidetracked
first by a Gentle woman with an afflicted child and later by a man, who was
deaf. Some people would continue to block Jesus' path throughout his ministry. In
an individual's life a detour sometimes becomes a primary road. What begins, as
an alternative route to one destination may become an entirely new direction,
leading to a different destination altogether. What have been the significant
detours on your journey, the experiences that have set your life on a new and
different course? Do you suspect that some of your detours have been
mysteriously and providentially arranged?
Changes in
direction fall into two categories. First, there are those changes over which
we have little or no control. We've been considering some of these. Second,
there are those changes that result from conscious decision we make. Most of
the detours in Jesus life were choices he made. In the needy lives Jesus
encountered everywhere, he heard the call of God and knew his mission.
Sometimes God calls
us to choose a detour, or invites us to make a conscious change of direction.
God honors our freedom, however, and these will always be our decisions, our
free choices---for better or for worse.
On the maps of this
world, things are not always as they seem.