Chapel Blog
Commit God's Way
By John Bishop, Director of Spiritual Formation
Proverbs 19:21 says, “Many are the plans in a person’s heart, but it is the LORD’s purpose that prevails.” Allow me to unpack the significance of this powerfully profound principle through the relatively simple experience of caring for Hamsters.
Hamstee (my daughter’s first pet hamster) was a horrible pet. We cared for it diligently and did all we could to show it love, but it gave almost nothing back, excepting a lot of middle-of-the-night disturbances, horrible smells, and a few bite wounds. The commitment we made to caring for Hamstee felt like all burden and very little blessing. So, when my daughter came running into the kitchen in a panic and said, “Daddy, the Hamster is dead.” I’m ashamed to admit that my first emotion was not grief. Still my daughter was very upset, so we committed to bury the hamster in the yard. Unfortunately, while digging the hole I broke one of the sprinkler lines! And this experience perfectly sums up what it was like owning and caring for Hamstee, even in its death it was a burden.
Committing to care for Buttercup (our current hamster), however, has been the picture of simplicity and joy. Somehow the little rodent makes cleaning out its filthy tunnels a joy. “We don’t want her to have to live in that squalor…she doesn’t know any better,” we think. We take her out and hold her all the time. She brings so much joy and pleasure to our family. And yet, while on a road trip she gave us quite the scare. The latch on her cage got loose and, in the night, she escaped into my brother-in-law's house. We eventually found her (thank God) but not before emptying closets, barricading rooms, and worrying for 24 hours.
When my daughter wanted to have a pet, when she envisioned snuggling and playing with a sweet, adorable little fluffy hamster, she had no way of knowing the grief and inconvenience that committing to this responsibility was going to entail (no pun intended). She had many plans that did not include horrible smells, Band-Aids, lost sleep, grief, anger, fear, and a trip to Home Depot for plumbing equipment.
But this perfectly sums up what commitment always looks like; much of life is unforeseen. This is why we make commitments (or why we so easily break them). We signed up for the AP class because we know that doing well in it looks great for our college applications. We joined the team because we liked watching it and our friends were playing. We bought the car because we liked the way it sounded in the test drive. But there is always an hidden burden associated with every commitment we make. There are unforeseen challenges associated with every decision we make.
When we commit God’s way, we do so with overflowing trust knowing that much of what will come our way is unknown and trusting that He knows and will give us the grace needed to face it. We cannot see the end of the story, ever. We only get to participate in the writing of the story as it unfolds today. So as much as we try to make plans to guard against negative outcomes, we can never anticipate being bitten by a feral rodent or waking up to the discovery that the cute rodent you love has escaped in the night.
There is a lot of wisdom available to us on how to make commitments and manage our time well, but none of that wisdom will help us know the future. That part we must trust to God.
So, should we keep the commitments we make? Yes, absolutely, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that is until unforeseen things that we could never have accounted for come up and we find ourselves stuck. But how do we know when it’s right to go back on a commitment we’ve made? I don’t know. In this question, and every other one we might ask about things that affect our futures, we can’t ultimately know the answers.
Our days will be filled with dozens of decisions stacking up incalculable effects and consequences from now until we shift into eternity. In other words, we either trust in our own limited wisdom to know the unknowable details of our futures and roll the dice, or we learn to trust God who already has a plan and purpose for us.
When Jesus found himself in a conversation with his disciples who were worried about where their lives were taking them, he said in response to their anxiety in John 14:6, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
Our plans will cause us to make many commitments, to sign up for many classes, join many teams, and bring home many pets. We should do all these things with our whole hearts, this it the canvas on which our life’s story is written, but when we make these commitments, let’s commit God’s way. Let’s trust in God’s wisdom and plan for our life. Let’s trust in Jesus, so that no matter what we face, we can experience His pleasure as His plans prevail in our lives.
Westminster Christian School, located in Palmetto Bay, Florida, is a private, college-preparatory school for children from preschool through twelfth grade.