Around the Bend 3.13.2025

     We can anticipate what may be up around the bend, but we cannot actually know. All we can really do is guess. We cannot have absolute certainty about the future. The certainty we can have and upon which we should base all other convictions is the certainty we have in Christ and His complete work.

     We will have His work upon our minds during the Easter season. We will look to Him as the guarantor of all those things we can anticipate but not know. We will consider the words of Jesus, His sacrifice, and His resurrection. In a sense, His passion was the ultimate blind spot of humanity. No one saw that one coming. As much as people tried, they could not really imagine the impact of His gospel and what it would mean for God-in-flesh to peek into our otherwise unforeseen future. The promises made and expectations shared could never really anticipate what Jesus would do. It was not fully understood until after the resurrection when Jesus provided the keys to understanding all the Biblical testimony to His coming, His vision, and His mission. 

    For our purpose and in this space putting our limitation into a broader perspective is important. We need to plan diligently if we are to preach well, and that planning must be kept in proper perspective. The preacher stands between God and congregation to vouch for the trustworthiness of God. We base our future words and deeds upon God’s past actions and the promises we find in scripture. We are only able to do that because Jesus Himself has bridged the gap between faith and sight. 

    It is tempting during disconcerting and frustrating times to read into the Biblical story issues it does not discuss and to wring from it echoes of what we already think, feel, and believe. The Biblical story is filled with hope but the truths the Scripture contains are often hard. Sin is not a soft subject, nor salvation. The temptation to elevate our field of vision to that of Scripture is best addressed by the diligent work of exegesis. A proper hermeneutic first looks behind and into the text before trying to project forward. In doing the hard work we establish an appropriate distance between our desires and Gods. In doing that hard work we have a guide for possible applications of the text. A guide to which we do well to adhere. If we forget or neglect what the author and/or speaker intended, we tempt ourselves with a knowledge that inappropriately appropriates the vocabulary of faith whilst using familiar words differently. We can never see around the next bend and much of what the New Testament says about any possible future is discussed in terms of responsible Christian behavior amid the temptations of our fallen world. The Bible clearly teaches us what we are expected to know. We are expected to know Jesus. We are to know not the content of the future, but its author. 

    The Bible both promises more than we can imagine and less that we desire. It is not our needs that bedevil us but our desires. It was because Adam and Eve thought that by listening to the serpent, they could, in effect, gaze up around the bend into their own future lives. In making that choice they were sundered from both their innocence and their relationship with God. Even our best intentions can still mislead us into thinking that God has promised a Crystal ball rather than the deliberate road of discipleship. 

    We prepare plans not to challenge God but to challenge ourselves. We know at some point that our sight will diminish and that we can never see beyond the bend. It is an act of faithful discipleship to beat a path into that unfamiliar future based upon the small amount of information available to us.  What little we see, know, and understand is leveraged not by a wild guess and leap of fate--but trust. Trust in the one who summons us into the unforeseen future following Him, telling His story, making disciples. To do that we need not know the unseeable future or see what lies beyond the next dip or bend. We only need to see Him.