Well, we’ve made it through another successful Shark Week on The Discovery Channel and, my personal favorite, Mob Week on AMC. Just when the country thought another week was going to be hijacked by Washington and the 24/7 “news” channels, we, Americans, were able to find solace and joy in Al Pacino and Great White Sharks! I hope you did tune in to either or both.
I think many to all of you would agree that our lives are punctuated and often times augmented by the unexpected. The unexpected in various degrees: good, bad and neutral. Sometimes what is unexpected can have profound effects on us, while some are just so ordinary and insignificant, that we don’t bat an eye at them; but unexpected events occur quite often in our lives. Some fun, some sad.
Consider for a moment things that have happened unexpectedly that had a significant effect on your life. Lose a job, Get a divorce, Death, Lost money in the markets, or won some money, you were proposed to, a relationship turned sour; you fill in the blanks. We each can tell unique stories of our own experiences of situations that we found ourselves in that we had not planned on and were not prepared to handle and take on. When these occurrences happen, what does our view of/relationship with/understanding of/desire for God go through? It changes, it takes on new meaning, it grows and matures as we do.
Elijah went up the mountain, the same one Moses went up to converse with God, for that very purpose, to talk to Him, to encounter and experience Him. Elijah knows the ordinary circumstances: some great force of nature or spectacular event will happen and God will be present there to talk to. Except this time, it didn’t happen that way. The loud forces of nature take place and Elijah expected God in anyone of them, but God wasn’t there. But then, silence. A quiet whisper, a deafening silence fell over Elijah, and there God was; absolutely not what Elijah had anticipated.
Jesus, after having multiplied the loaves, asks the disciples to go off ahead of him and he wants to stay behind and pray for a while. During the fourth watch, between 3-6 am, they are caught in the midst of a storm on the lake. While these men, some experienced fishermen, were navigating to boat in the storm, Jesus comes walking towards them on the water! Out of nowhere with no real warning, Jesus is walking on water and coming towards them. Naturally, they thought it was a ghost and call out to it to identify itself. Christ answers I Am – the name of God. Peter, after seeing its Christ asks Him to let him do the same that He does. Jesus calls him out. The extraordinariness of the event was too much for him and he began to sink. Those twelve men received and encounter and revelation of God that they certainly never expected to be part of, yet it changed them and supplied them with a new and changed faith and relationship with their friend and Lord.
The unexpected can happen in our lives, and It does, expect it. God also reveals himself in unexpected ways and through unexpected people. We need to release some of our expectations and soften our rigidness in living life. We cannot put up expectations and unfair demands on others, ourselves, the world and God and have those be the only parameters for what is right and good. We have to accept that life will be what life will be and we have to deal with how it is dealt to, not what we construct it and force it to be. If something bad happens to us, it is not a sign that God hates us or that we are no good; it is merely an opportunity and occasion for us to rise up and be what we need to be. If we don’t see or hear God as we think we ought to, we need to let go of how we think God should be and realize how he truly is. If you think you are going to have only depressing news to watch and there is shark week and mob week on, are you going to watch it? If someone doesn’t seem to love you like they should; be it a mom or dad, child, spouse or friend, remember, just because someone doesn’t love the way you want them to, does not mean they don’t love you with everything they are. The unexpected, in an unexpected way, not the way I wanted it to happen – these synonymous expressions are part of the rhythm of life. They are going to occur. The real question arises, how you are going to respond to it.
Elijah, Peter and the other disciples accepted the unexpected with faith. They trusted that in the end, God was on their side and would not abandon them, that was and still is the only expected!
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