I know there are many of you out there who didn't watch the finale to "my" show, "Lost," last Sunday night. You may have heard of its "religious" or "spiritual" overtones. I won't give away endings, or go on too long about the show, except to quote from a reviewer, "Doc" Jensen. He is a Christian himself (he dares to say, even as he works out in Hollywood for Entertainment Weekly), so maybe he reads too much Christian meaning into Lost episodes. Yet, commenting on a major character's key actions at the end, the Doc writes this:
The Lost story is all about the folly of "master plans." Anyone who has ever had a master plan on this show has failed catastrophically. Mother.
Jacob. The Man in Black. Ben. Charles Widmore. Jack. Sawyer. The best we can do is live our lives with enlightened improvisation -- to be so
self-aware and fearless that we can live fully in the present and redeem our every moment and every human connection."
There's that old saying, "Man proposes -- God disposes." Even Proverbs weighs in: "The human mind may devise many plans, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will be established." (Prov. 19:21) It was Lincoln that once said -- to much consternation -- "I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me." Even in his own day people take that quote the wrong way. Lincoln wasn't saying that his actions were totally random, or without a moral compass; he simply implied that it is not enough to have a moral compass; that one must also be open to the timing and the method of execution of the "good deed," in order for that "good deed" to REALLY be a part of God's plan. When a preacher proclaimed that God was on their side, Lincoln said he preferred rather that THEY would be on GOD'S side. We must listen to God several moments of every day to do that -- to follow HIS master plan, not our own.
I was watching Hamlet the other day. Throughout the play Prince Hamlet does not know whether to kill his uncle, King Claudius, or not; Hamlet is not sure that the ghost claiming to be Hamlet's father is really his father or a demon -- a demon that may be lying to him about being murdered by brother Claudius. Hamlet seems ready to wreak revenge and cleanse Denmark of its "rotten"-ness; but then circumstances...Hamlet's own scrupulous morality and intellect,...and some confusing evidence...keep Hamlet from action. "Conscience makes cowards of us all!" he cries out in despair. Then the uncle/king forces Hamlet to go to England.
When he returns -- surviving his uncle's assassination plot -- he has found peace. He is ready to die, if need be, to rid Denmark of its king and corruption -- but only if God tells him that NOW is the time. "There's a divinity that shapes our ends," he says, "Rough-hew them how we will." He will not force the issue. He realizes that "there is a special Providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it [his action] be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not know, yet it will come -- the readiness is all."
"Prepare ye the way of the Lord!" cried John the Baptist. He told us all to "prepare" to be an instrument, a ready-made instrument, in God's hands. "Do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing," said Jesus. Jesus knows we will be "ready" for God's use when we are not too busy with our own agendas, and ready and open to God's agenda - the agenda of the moment, and of a lifetime. As Doc Jensen said above, we should get ready to "live fully in the present and redeem every moment and every human connection." And how do we do that? Jensen says by being "self-aware" (aware of possible avenues to serve God) and "fearless" (fear is the opposite force to God's love). Prayer and discipline and worship and study and instrospection are a part of that -- all avenues into our heart for the Spirit to travel.
Lincoln -- a student of both the Bible and Shakespeare -- sought God's timing for the start of the Civil War, for the Emancipation Proclamation, for the use of black troops, and so forth. Hamlet sought God's timing, and found it when it was clear that his wicked uncle had not only poisoned Hamlet but also his mother and Laertes. No one would defend Claudius, and Hamlet executed him. Both Lincoln and Hamlet died for "the cause," but they died at the right time, after God had used them up.
May you and I find that "the readiness is all," and, when God uses us "ready" people, that He use us...up. For, in the life to come, He will fill us to the brim...again.
David Hewitt
