Continuing from Jerry Sittser * Overcoming Worry.
In addition to praying about the future, we can also prepare for it. One major way of doing this is to live well in the present. We can practice spiritual discipline, develop character, form lasting friendships and become a person of faith. We can refine skills like computing and speaking, and manage our resources responsibly. In doing so we will be better equipped to do whatever the future requires of us.
A good friend recently wrote to me to express his own reflections on God’s will. “In our instantly gratified world today,” he wrote, “we have higher expectations of things coming to us on silver platters, including our vocational destiny.” He referred to Abraham Lincoln as an example of someone who faced “failures, humiliations, and frustrations “before achieving his goals and accomplishing God’s will. We should expect the same. My friend has personally endured much difficulty working for an inner-city community center—“at a measly $4.55 an hour to babysit screaming kids and deal with irresponsible parents who did nothing but criticize the staff and the program.”
Yet that job inspired him to return to school to become a teacher. It helped him develop practical skills, creative lesson plans, and positive methods of communication, along with such character qualities as patience and endurance. Even the low wages worked to his advantage. “My service and experimental activities came as a donation under my control, which relieved him of the pressure of high expectations. He concluded, “That whole year was an example of preparation. Isn’t that in reality what most of life is? Every so often we celebrate the fruits of success, but lets not deceive ourselves into thinking that God’s will means achieving a final product without preparation along the way.
Finally we should live in hope. Christians have every reason to have earthly hope. Though we are mortal and life is fragile, we can take comfort in the fact that “the sun will come up tomorrow.” Having earthly hope means we can attend school and earn degrees, get a job and make an income, set goals and plan schedules and take care of details, all the while assuming that life will continue on earth for some time to come. There is a good kind of worldliness; there is much in this life worth living for. ~Jerry Sittser, The Will of God as a Way of Life (Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49530, 2000, 2004), 138-139
