From Jerry Sittser, from his book ‘The Will of God as a Way of Life’:
I spent the first twenty years of my life feeling certain I knew the will of God for my life. I was going to practice medicine. I was as sure about the future as I was about the difficulty of getting there, for making it to the end seemed a daunting task for me. While still in high school, I talked seriously with a plastic surgeon about joining his practice when I completed my education, and he invited me to his summer home to show me slides of his work. By the time I entered college, I was eager to enroll in science and math courses to prepare for medical school. I had one goal in mind. Everything else was a distraction and inconvenience to me, like having to do chores on a summer day.
But I made a fatal mistake in selecting a college. Hope college, located in Holland, Michigan, was a liberal arts, institution, which meant that it required students to take a broad range of general studies courses. If I ever wanted to earn a degree from Hope, therefore, I would have to do more than study science. I would also have to read Dostoyevsky, listen to Beethoven, study the causes of the Crimean War and write a persuasive essay.
I was about as eager to study the liberal arts as I was to read a dictionary for weekend pleasure. But I had no choice. In my first semester I signed up for a freshman writing class. For years I had read literature only under duress and had avoided writing altogether, except when a teacher forced me to put pen to paper. Fortunately, my writing professor, Dr. Nancy Miller, knew my type. Savvy and sociable, she was adept at handling people like me. When I griped one day about the writing requirement, she ignored me as if I had just made a bland comment about the Detroit Lions. When I told her that I simply did not need the course because I was not planning to write for a career, she replied, “You never know, Jerry, how things will turn out.
She was right, of course. I ended up doing something far different from what I assumed was God’s will for my life. I did not attend medical school; I did not become a medical doctor; I enrolled in seminary. I did not become a medical doctor. . . . I became a minister instead.
Inability to Predict the Future
From this experience, I learned a valuable lesson I will never forget: We never know how things will turn out. What appears in our mind to be the pathway we should take might change as suddenly as weather in the Midwest. So we would be wise to be attentive and responsive to God along the way, even in matters that appear to have little significance, such as crafting good papers in freshman writing class. Perhaps our attention to these little things is the will of God, and our preoccupation with the future is a foolish distraction.
As I look back on my forty-nine years, I see a pattern emerge. At various points along the way I thought I knew the pathway I was supposed to take, but I ended up doing something quite different. This different “something” turned out to be the will of God. At twenty, I was sure that God wanted me to pursue a career in medicine; I became a minister instead. At thirty, I planned to stay the course in pastoral ministry; now I am a college professor. At forty, I didn’t aspire to be an avid writer; now I am finishing my fifth book. At every step along the way I thought I knew God’s will for my life. I thought I had it all figured out. But it did not turn out as I had planned. ~The Will of God as a Way of Life (Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49530 USA). 19-21
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