From Jerry Sittser and his book “the will of God as a Way of Life”:
We should try to be flexible because circumstances can often change suddenly and even irreversibly. There is nothing wrong with keeping a schedule and a to-do list, nor with learning to manage our time as best we can, mastering the art of “multi-tasking,” and becoming self-disciplined.
But we should be aware, too. Control is a myth. It presupposes that the world is rational, predictable, and controllable. But the world is none of these things. A friend of mine was planning to play professional baseball and marry his high school sweetheart. But a freak farm accident left him quadriplegic. Steve suddenly lost control of his life, and his fiancée vanished. He has since developed a printing business, and he plans the schedules for dozens of sports teams on the south side of Chicago. He is as busy as ever serving God, although not in the way he wanted or expected.
The worst nightmare for a single working parent is a sick child. Yet all children get sick, including children of single parents. Accidents happen at inconvenient times, and jobs put demands on us when we have the least amount of time to meet the new challenge. As Murphy’s Law says, “If things can go wrong, they always will, and always at the worst possible time.” I respond with cynicism when self-help gurus dole out advice. One guru promises he can help people to reach “peak performance” if they will follow his program. I am more interested in learning how to maintain “peak survival.” I think to myself, I hope he has a lot of unruly kids.
Life does not always run smoothly. A big crisis—even a little crisis—can change everything in a minute. We have dreams that appear to be from God, work hard to do his will and live the best we can. Then something happens—the stock market crashes, friends move, health fails, a nanny quits—and we find ourselves living in an unstable world, as if the ground underneath us has started to roll like the waves of an ocean. In such a world as this it is easy to get seasick. How can we do the will of God when God keeps upsetting our—and we assume—his plans—? Why does God put obstacles in the way? Why would God play that kind of trick on us?
We can be certain of only one thing. Life will not turn out the way we had planned. There will be surprises along the way, some little and inconvenient (like a computer crash or a child getting the flu), some big and catastrophic (an accident, war, or divorce). How we respond to unforeseen circumstances matters just as much as whether we can control them. ~Jerry Sittser, the Will of God as a Way of Life (Grande Rapids, Michigan, Zondervan) p. 196-97
