I’ve been thinking about how to fail the right way.
There is this half-hearted way that we tend to strive toward our objectives, whenever we set out to accomplish them by our own plans and power. We go forward, but we also brace for failure. In these goals we imagine, we are like little gods who conceive of new worlds for ourselves to inhabit. Yet we know we are too small, as gods, to be able to certainly make those worlds real.
As Psalm 127 says, “Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it.”
A person senses this even if he doesn’t have faith, even if she doesn’t have the Bible. We sense how vain our labor is. The innate tentativeness of nearly all our efforts is based upon this. We fear to break our own hearts by pinning too much hope upon those efforts, and upon our own plans.
But then there is the effort that is founded on the idea that fruitfulness comes from Christ—that success comes from the Son. We are joined in the work. Therefore, we submit to being joined in the imagining as well. As Jesus laid down his life for each of us, we are ready to lay down the “life” of whatever plans we have laid.
I have been reading this book, The Dream Giver by Bruce Wilkinson. The book’s message is that we strive with God, and persevere by God, to realize the dream that is written upon our own God-inspired heart.
I have been reading another book, What Now? by Ann Patchett. The point of this book is that the way ahead in any life is only clear in retrospect. Life’s journey doesn’t follow a map, and it tends to turn on decisions that didn’t seem significant at the time they were being made.
The books offer two different ideas. They offer two different compelling ideas—ideas that, taken alone, both seem right. I, and no doubt you as well, have encountered variations on each of these ideas before. Both books make their points well—I recommend them. Yet I have been looking to reconcile their disparate themes. Namely, to reconcile the idea that the success we dream is to be attained, versus the apparently competing idea that the success we did not dream is out there to be found.
Paul wrote this to the Corinthian church:
Do I plan according to the flesh, that with me there should be Yes, Yes, and No, No?
All the promises of God in him are Yes, and in him Amen, to the glory of God through us. —2 Corinthians 1:17 and 20 (emphasis mine)
In other words, the game is God’s to win.
But even more than that, the game is God’s to determine just what the game is.
God is glorified through us, said Paul. That means the manifold dreams of our own yearning hearts absolutely are important. Racing ahead to win the success that God placed upon our hearts is a vital component of how we trust in him, and how we bear fruit for him. It is a vital part of how we love him.
Yet at the same time, achieving precisely the success we imagined could be the very worst thing for us. He has such great use for us that he calls us to something even better.
In this world, the only success we can imagine for ourselves is the success defined and limited by this world’s rules and understanding. We are part of this world. Yet we are not of it. We think and work within this world, while our lives and the fullest part of our destinies belong to the eternal. Thus, the true success that we realize, in a moment of work or a lifetime, might intersect with the success we imagined—or it might not. Either way, we laugh.
We laugh in the way that I imagine Paul learned to laugh at his own “Yes, Yes” and “No, No.”
We laugh, and we stand with God wherever he puts us. Wherever! That spot might be in the place of the realization and fruition of all of our plans and strivings. Or, perhaps just as likely, God might put us where we get to see the colorful and instructive disruption of the many simple plans we originally drew.
There is this conversation we are having with God, and the title of that conversation is “Life on Earth.” Our daring to pursue plans or dream big dreams is the way that we speak to God within the reality he created around us. And when we do this, God speaks back.
There is this half-hearted way that we tend to strive toward our objectives, whenever we set out to accomplish them by our own plans and power. We go forward, but we also brace for failure. In these goals we imagine, we are like little gods who conceive of new worlds for ourselves to inhabit. Yet we know we are too small, as gods, to be able to certainly make those worlds real.
As Psalm 127 says, “Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it.”
A person senses this even if he doesn’t have faith, even if she doesn’t have the Bible. We sense how vain our labor is. The innate tentativeness of nearly all our efforts is based upon this. We fear to break our own hearts by pinning too much hope upon those efforts, and upon our own plans.
But then there is the effort that is founded on the idea that fruitfulness comes from Christ—that success comes from the Son. We are joined in the work. Therefore, we submit to being joined in the imagining as well. As Jesus laid down his life for each of us, we are ready to lay down the “life” of whatever plans we have laid.
I have been reading this book, The Dream Giver by Bruce Wilkinson. The book’s message is that we strive with God, and persevere by God, to realize the dream that is written upon our own God-inspired heart.
I have been reading another book, What Now? by Ann Patchett. The point of this book is that the way ahead in any life is only clear in retrospect. Life’s journey doesn’t follow a map, and it tends to turn on decisions that didn’t seem significant at the time they were being made.
The books offer two different ideas. They offer two different compelling ideas—ideas that, taken alone, both seem right. I, and no doubt you as well, have encountered variations on each of these ideas before. Both books make their points well—I recommend them. Yet I have been looking to reconcile their disparate themes. Namely, to reconcile the idea that the success we dream is to be attained, versus the apparently competing idea that the success we did not dream is out there to be found.
Paul wrote this to the Corinthian church:
Do I plan according to the flesh, that with me there should be Yes, Yes, and No, No?
All the promises of God in him are Yes, and in him Amen, to the glory of God through us. —2 Corinthians 1:17 and 20 (emphasis mine)
In other words, the game is God’s to win.
But even more than that, the game is God’s to determine just what the game is.
God is glorified through us, said Paul. That means the manifold dreams of our own yearning hearts absolutely are important. Racing ahead to win the success that God placed upon our hearts is a vital component of how we trust in him, and how we bear fruit for him. It is a vital part of how we love him.
Yet at the same time, achieving precisely the success we imagined could be the very worst thing for us. He has such great use for us that he calls us to something even better.
In this world, the only success we can imagine for ourselves is the success defined and limited by this world’s rules and understanding. We are part of this world. Yet we are not of it. We think and work within this world, while our lives and the fullest part of our destinies belong to the eternal. Thus, the true success that we realize, in a moment of work or a lifetime, might intersect with the success we imagined—or it might not. Either way, we laugh.
We laugh in the way that I imagine Paul learned to laugh at his own “Yes, Yes” and “No, No.”
We laugh, and we stand with God wherever he puts us. Wherever! That spot might be in the place of the realization and fruition of all of our plans and strivings. Or, perhaps just as likely, God might put us where we get to see the colorful and instructive disruption of the many simple plans we originally drew.
There is this conversation we are having with God, and the title of that conversation is “Life on Earth.” Our daring to pursue plans or dream big dreams is the way that we speak to God within the reality he created around us. And when we do this, God speaks back.
