Faith Works 5-19-18

Faith Works 5-19-18

Jeff Gill

 

If you want to make God laugh…

___

 

Plans aren't really anything that the Bible teaches against.

 

There is that aside in James 4:15 about always qualifying our future expectations with "if the Lord wills," and folklore debates whether we're talking about Native Americans or a small watercourse "if the Creek don't rise."

 

Even so, planning doesn't strike me as being a lack of faith. Not planning isn't an excess of faith, either, or so I'd say. Making a plan requires a certain amount of confidence in a number of possibilities, a hope for your future that allows you to project forward a potential that you can begin working on today.

 

I've read that procrastination is really an expression of insecurity and anxiety about one's own capacity to do something well. In this line of thinking, we procrastinate so we can say afterwards "hey, that wasn't my best effort, I could have done better, but I just didn't have the time." Or didn't take the time. A psychological self-inflicted handicap that keeps us from truly trying our best . . . for fear that when we saw what our best really was, it wouldn't live up to our own cherished image of what we're capable of.

 

In that sense, planning is precisely an act, a leap of faith. Faith in action, faith that, well, works. If you set out to anticipate what you want to get done, lay out a plan for it, and mark your progress against it, you do set yourself up for the possibility of failure. You may make plans you can't fulfill, even with your best efforts.

 

This is where the real impact of faith on planning comes in, with forgiveness. If we can imagine ourselves as forgiven even if we don't succeed, if we can forgive ourselves for falling short or do so with others who disappoint us, then we can take the risk of making plans.

 

But it's consistently amazing to me how rare making plans actually is. For people, of all ages, for organizations of any kind, and that would include churches.

 

I work with youth in a variety of settings, and no one is really all that surprised that a juvenile, a teenager, a young adult doesn't have much of a plan for the future. They tend to be very much taken up with the moment at hand, and for many of them, future planning means next week. It's about a seven to ten day horizon we're working with as we talk about their "plans."

 

But many, maybe even most adults have more of a thirty day horizon. This month, and spilling into next month a bit, but not very much about next year, or a couple of years on. If I'm talking about you, the good news is that you've got lots of company!

 

The bad news is that lack of planning, of anticipating the future, is pretty much a sign of anxiety and fear. If you have nothing but doubt and hopelessness about your future, then you certainly wouldn't want to spend too much time in your head "going there." So you live day to day, and stick with the challenges you think you really can cope with. The future, not so much.

 

Planning for next year and the next stage of life and around big transitions ahead can evoke its own range of anxieties and fears. "Dostadning" is a Swedish name for "death cleaning." It's a decluttering discipline and a form of preparing for downsizing that's catching on in some quarters, but certainly provokes a fair amount of negative reaction, too. "Dostadning" takes a basic willingness to admit and face the reality that you may be moving towards restrictions, smaller spaces, fewer rooms to store stuff in; it can also touch on your desire not to make your children or heirs or friends have to go through the painful process of sorting through and throwing out lots of your stuff.

 

It also requires you to concede that someday, you will die. Is that a prospect you can face?

 

Swedish idioms aside, I think there's a great deal about planning, or not planning, that is rooted in our basic sense of ultimate purpose. As in, do I have one, and are my values something more than what I own, the stuff I have, the accomplishments to my credit?

 

Faith and planning have a great deal in common, and one supports the other, step by step, day by day. From now 'til forever!

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he has made unsuccessful plans before, and is still willing to make new ones. Tell him your plans at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.