In a month, I start an internship at a church. All year, as graduation approached, I have had to field questions about my plans for my immediate and long-term future, and there have been those who've understood my answers, and those who haven't. It seems that there is something counter-cultural about not having a Five Year Plan. I know that the next year will be challenging and transformational and will help me set my roots in God as I work out how to live out the radical love of the gospel. For me, that is enough. I do not need to know exactly what I am going to achieve, and exactly where I will be in a year's time. When I make plans, Daddy always changes them anyway...
That was a roundabout way of saying that I do not need everyone I meet to approve of the choices I'm making as long as I am being obedient to Papa G. Buuuuuuuuuuuuut there are definitely some people who made/make me a little cranky. The ones who somehow only see my value in the fact that I might marry a vicar and be a vicar's wife. They don't think I'm enough by myself, either because I'm me, or because I'm a girl, or because they don't know the reality of a God who can use anyone (including me, apparently) to change the world. I got angry the other day when someone (in the bizarrest social situation I've been in for a while) a) implied that he doesn't think women are fit to lead church and b) thought that the point of following Jesus is having people come through the door of your church. I had a rant-filled post rolling around in my head for a couple of days, but then I read this (written by Dorothy L. Sayers, and quoted by Jo Saxton in her book Influential: Women in Leadership at Church, Work and Beyond):
Perhaps it is no wonder that women were first at the Cradle and last at the Cross. They had never known a man like this Man - there never has been such another. A prophet and teacher who never nagged at them, never flattered or coaxed or patronised; who never made arch jokes about them, never treated them either as 'The women, God help us!' or 'The ladies, God bless them!'; who rebuked without querulousness and praised without condescension; who took their questions and arguments seriously; who never mapped out their sphere for them, never urged them to be feminine or jeered at them for being female; who had no axe to grind or no uneasy male dignity to defend; who took them as He found them and was completely unselfconscious. There is no act, no sermon, no parable in the whole Gospel which borrows its pungency from female perversity; nobody could possibly guess from the words and deeds of Jesus that there was anything 'funny' about women's nature.
And then I read this, by Mark Twain:
Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you too, can become great. When you are seeking to bring big plans to fruition, it is important with whom you regularly associate. Hang out with friends who are like-minded and who are also designing purpose-filled lives. Similarly be that kind of a friend for your friends.
And having read those things, I took a step back from my fairly self-righteous indignation. I am following Jesus, and He loves me and knows the plans He has for me. The people in my current daily life may not be ones who are currently 'designing purpose-filled lives', but I can be that kind of friend to them. And furthermore, I am not alone. I am in a relationship with an incredible and all-loving Daddy who is the absolute authority on purpose-filled lives.
There is grace in this season, not just to see us through, but to renew us.
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