epiphany

Charmed, I'm Sure

Last night at my Thursday foreigner's Bible study, someone asked for prayer regarding his future, that he would be where God wants him to be. I teased him about it a little because I firmly believe that, apart from willful sin, a person is always where God wants him to be. One of the older ladies chided me, saying that maybe I just lacked experience because she had certainly been places where she shouldn't have been.

Still, looking at what I can remember of my life (which isn't much, to be honest. My sister can clearly remember things from when she was two or three years old; I'm lucky when I remember things from a month ago), I can't avoid seeing God wherever I've been.

When I was a small child (I must have been in kindergarten or younger), I remember riding in our old Plymouth back from one of my mom's weekly bowling matches. I had been playing in the back seat and wayback of our station wagon when I decided to climb into the front seat. In typical little boy fashion I kind of flopped over the seat and began playing up there. Minutes later, if that long, the rear window of the car exploded for no apparent reason, filling the wayback, where I had been playing, with glass shrapnel. I remember Mom asking me why I had climbed into the front seat. Maybe she was wondering if I had seen something to warn me that the window was having problems or if I had done something to the window. I only knew that I needed to play in the front seat. (And if any of that memory is wrong, you can correct me, Mom.)

The summer of my sophomore year at Bob Jones University, a friend and I drove to Alaska to find work in a cannery. After being flown out to Dillingham, I ended up working a twelve-hour night shift. Toward the end of the season, my hours had changed a little bit, and I was going to be early (around 2:00am, I think). I heard some people talking in a tent near me and had an opportunity to give them the Gospel over the course of the next few hours. Had I not had the night shift before, I never would have been able to speak with them that long or that late. Had I not been chosen to live in a tent instead of the dorms, I never would have heard them talking. Also, had my friend not been called out to work on the boats and left me alone in the tent for three weeks, I probably wouldn't have begun reading my Bible. It wasn't until I was alone in the Alaska wilderness that I realized my true need to seek God.

When I was a senior, I really wanted to go on the Musical Mission Team, but I missed the tryouts for various reasons, including my own forgetfulness. At the end of the semester, well after rehearsals had started, one of the other tenors dropped out of the team, and I "happened" to be the one Dr. McCauley asked to go.

In the Spring semester of 2001, I dropped out of grad school to help my parents because of my dad's cancer. While home, I got connected with a team from Maranatha Baptist Bible College and ended up going to Kenya that summer. Both the Musical Mission Team and that trip to Kenya contained pivotal moments in my life, directing me in ways I never would have headed apart from those experiences.

I wouldn't have gone back to school in the fall of 2001 if I hadn't called my former boss to see if I could have a job the following January. He said I could wait, but they had a spot open right then that they really wanted me for. I took the job, and that semester I took two of the most influential classes of my educational career: Schenkerian Analysis and Aesthetics. Due to their rotational schedule, I wouldn't have had the opportunity to take either class had I not returned to school that fall. Schenkerian Analysis introduced me to an analysis method that explained exactly how I hear music and solidified my love of theory. Aesthetics introduced me to the book Modern Art and the Death of a Culture, which began to open my eyes to the Gospel and freedom in Christ and began to break the chains of my self-made legalism.

In the Spring of 2002, I began visiting (attending) a small Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran church near BJU, largely because of a Poetry Writing assignment, "Do something you've never done before and write a poem about it." I had never been to a Lutheran service. I was looking for a church anyway. Why not give it a chance? I could at least get a hopefully decent grade out of it and understand some of my home state's religious culture a little better. It turned out that the sermons focused aspects of the Bible I had never seriously considered before. The pastor's continual emphasis on the simplicity and living of the Gospel and the completed work of Christ furthered my growth and provided a solid foundation in the faith.

Later that semester, I fell headlong into my old sins and knew that I needed to find some help. I couldn't ask anyone at BJ to help me for various reasons, including pride, so I went to North Hills Community Church because I'd heard that they had a good counseling ministry (which has since become its own organization) and a reputation as a church that was doing good in the community. I had visited their services several times before I found out that I wasn't allowed to go there, so I was a little bit familiar with the place. The counselor and mentors that I met there helped water the seed of God's truth that had laid dormant and--up to that time--even molding in my life, furthering the foundational work that had begun through the Rookmaaker's book and Abiding Peace, the WELS church. God used them to help me in the battle against sin and in the strengthening of my faith.

I believe that all of that, including allowing me to fall as deeply into my sins as I had, was part of God's work in preparing me for my father's death that November. Had I not read Modern Art and the Death of a Culture, I never would have begun to question my understanding of the Scripture and my false philosophies about life and faith. Had I not attended Abiding Peace Lutheran Church, I never would have recognized the simplicity of the Gospel and the full measure of God's forgiveness. I never would have learned to walk in faith and forgiveness. Had I not unintentionally broken the school rules (well, I did go to one service after finding out that I wasn't supposed to; I had already been going for around six weeks) in visiting NHCC and soon after fallen back into my sins, I wouldn't have asked for their help and received a fleshing out of the foundational truths about Christ and his work. Without that background and groundwork, I have no idea how I could have survived--much less thrived--following my father's death and the grief surrounding it.

I graduated in December of 2002 and went home. After a few weeks at home and a consistent lack of employment from the group that had said they wanted to employ me, I headed out to Seattle to join some people I barely knew plant a church. Well, the group that was supposed to be coming kept bumping the arrival date, and I quickly connected with Mars Hill, thanks to renting a room from a deacon and having a community group in my living room every Tuesday night. It was the next perfect step in my spiritual growth, continuing the process that had begun in Kenya and grown through the following year and a half. Unfortunately, I couldn't find work, and being a Midwestern boy through and through, deeply missed my Wisconsin landscapes. After four terrific months in Seattle and despite God continually providing the money, food, friendship and shelter that I needed (which I knew he would continue to do), I knew it was time to leave. It was time for me to go home.

I loved the plains and hills dotted with forests and farms as I returned to my Land (even mountains hold no majesty comparable to the inland sea of grass and its the time-frozen rolling waves). But I still didn't have a job and wasn't sure what to do about getting one. I didn't have to worry, because a week or so after I arrived home, I received the phone call that caused me to end up typing this blog entry on a computer in Dalian, China. So I do think I have some experience in seeing God's hand, and I still can't think of a time or place where I wasn't where he wanted me to be.

But now the future lies ahead and looms before me. Some of it seems clear, but a fog has rolled in, obscuring many things I thought I knew. I do not know for certain where I will be next--I never have known these things, though I think I have a path in sight. But wherever I do go next, I know that God is guiding me, and he is the one who will have me where I must be.

Posted by at May 28, 2004 11:12 AM