This has been the summer of being reunited.  Two weeks ago today we were in Missouri where we joined Nancy’s father’s family for a reunion they’ve held every three years for the last thirty.  About the time the Heerwald clan first reunited, I graduated from high school.  So, this last weekend, I was in Lubbock for my thirtieth high school class reunion.  My thirtieth!  Anyway, while I have been separated from you, I’ve been busy reuniting with some other very special people in my life.  Coming face to face with all those faces that have changed over these past three decades also brought me face to face with the truth of God that never changes.  Now that I have been reunited with you, I want to tell you what I experienced staring that much truth in the face.  Needless to say, this past two weeks has been the summer of being reunited, not just with people, but, in its own way, with God.

The scriptural basis for this message is part of a first-century letter from the apostle Paul to the church at Rome.  If you’ve ever been to Carlsbad Caverns you know that, since Jim White first dropped a rope into that big hole in southeast New Mexico in 1898, the place has been well explored.  For decades now, people have walked through the Caverns on well-lit concrete pathways.  You also know that there are places in those 70 million year-old limestone caverns that, as far as modern man knows, no human has ever set foot, deep recesses, yet to be explored.  No one will likely ever see it all.  It’s that big. 

Romans 8 is a Carlsbad Caverns kind of scripture.  It’s probably one of the most well explored passages in the entire Bible.  In some places we can travel on well-lit pathways.  Places like the ones marked with the promise, “we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.”  Then we come to places marked with words like “predestination” and the “foreknowledge of God” and we find ourselves staring into deep recesses of truth no human mind has or ever will fully explore.  It’s that big a text.  But, in it, there is truth that I found myself staring into, face to face, this past two weeks.  For the sake of time, I’ve reduced what I will say to one simple thought. 

The will of God is not a roadmap, it is a relationship.  Gerald Mann once said that long-range planning is absolutely essential but it is also absolutely worthless.  He was saying that we should make plans.  He was also warning that we should trust God more.  Eventually, our best plans won’t be good enough.  Nothing will remind you of that more than two reunions in less than two weeks.  At both, most of us had to admit we were working from our plan “B.”  Plan “A” got shredded somewhere along the way by things none of us could have possibly anticipated. 

Please note carefully that this scripture is not saying that everything that happens to us is good.  It even mentions some disastrous things that can come our way, “hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword.”  Too many believe and preach that the presence of suffering or hardship indicates the absence of faith.  The truth is, the only qualification for suffering is being alive, faithful to God or not.  Not everything that happens to us is going to be good.  And, not everything that happens to us is the will of God.  Listen carefully to the word of God again, “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God.”  Another translation of this same text is even more pointed, “We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him . . . (NIV).”

One of the things thirty years has done is cause me to rethink some of my basic definitions; made me look for a better dictionary.  Of course, some things never change.  Seventeen plus thirty will always equal forty-seven.  It’s rather amusing that so many of us would write in each other’s high school annuals, “Stay the way you are.”  Well, it didn’t work.  Seventeen plus thirty will always equal forty-seven.  But, how we define forty-seven when we are seventeen and how we define it just shy of forty-eight definitely changes.  At seventeen, we tend to make forty-seven synonymous with words like, “over the hill,” or “frumpy,” or “needs an undertaker.”  But, trust me, if you are seventeen, and you live long enough, you will learn to redefine certain words.  It was interesting to see how aging had affected people physically.  In some cases, it actually helped.  In others, well.  Some who were rather plain looking had come a long way.  Others who I remember being very attractive had come, and gone again.  When I suggested to some my classmates that we vote on who had changed the least since graduation my friend Janis said, “It won’t be you.”  Assuming that we can all agree that aging and maturing are not synonymous, I’d still rush to say that, if you are in high school right now, please be careful not to write people off who don’t look like they will amount to anything.  Thirty years from now, you will be disappointed in some of the choices you made based on that prejudice.  Keep an open mind to future possibilities.  You can always narrow your tastes later.  Almost certainly, your definition of beauty will change.

It is also true that, over time, scripture will cause you to rewrite your definition of “good.”  Often, when we are first starting out, good is narrowly defined in terms of favorable circumstances or always positive experiences or successful results.  Scripture, however, would ask us to rethink our definition of good not in terms of what happens to us but in terms of what God ultimately intends for us.  “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God who are called according to his purpose. . . to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn within a large family.”  The will of God is a relationship, not a roadmap.  Not everything that happens to us is good.  Not everything that happens to us is God’s will.  But, nothing can happen to us or come to us that, if we will surrender ourselves to loving him, God cannot and will not take and weave into his greater purpose for our very existence, to make us like Jesus. 

I’ve been reading Michael J. Fox’s memoir, Lucky Man (Hyperion, 2002).  Fox is the Emmy award-winning actor who played Alex Keaton in the ‘80’s sitcom, Family Ties.  Ten years ago, when he was thirty, he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.  By that time, he had already achieved more fame and fortune than most people ever know in a lifetime.  He was a loving husband and father with his whole life and career still in front of him.  Then came the devastating news that, if he was lucky, he’d have ten good years left.  He went through the normal and very understandable process of grieving.  But, this is what he has come to say of this whole experience.  “If you were to rush into this room right now and announce that you had struck a deal with God, Allah, Buddha, Christ, Krishna, Bill Gates, whomever, in which the ten years since my diagnosis could be magically taken away, traded in for ten more years as the person I was before, I would, without a moment’s hesitation, tell you to take a hike.”

That’s because, in those ten years, he has been forced to confront his addictions to work and alcohol that were silently destroying him from the inside out, out of sight of his public persona.  Parkinson’s is not a good thing.  But, it has brought good to him.  Fox’s testimony is not a particularly Christian one.  But, the world Michael Fox inhabits is the world God created.  The world in which he reveals himself to us, not through roadmaps drawn by morally and intellectually perfect people, but through a personal relationship with his Son, Jesus Christ.  That is how God works.  He takes even the most evil things and employs them as his servants to usher into our lives what is his ultimately good purpose, to introduce us to and make us like Jesus, just a little more every day.

My natural inclination is to lean toward the anxious way of seeing things.  I only make that confession because I’m absolutely certain I have lots of good company in this fellowship.  But, something happened to me at my thirty-year reunion.  We stood around and told stories about our school years together.  Some I’d heard before; some were new to me.  And, some of the missing pieces of my high school puzzle finally fell into place.  It work’s that way, you know.  We better understand life, and especially God’s will, looking back, not forward.  But, at the end of that evening I came to the startling recognition that the very worst things I have ever dreaded or worried about have never happened to me.  Now, that is just my testimony.  It may not be yours.  Your worst fears may have come true.  Mine have not.  Either way, this is the promise of God.  Even if the very worst we could possibly imagine were to happen, it cannot prevent God’s very best from finding its way into our lives.  Indeed, as we surrender ourselves to the purpose of God, he takes the very worst and hones it into the silver platter upon he serves up his very best.  And, his best is his purpose, his will, that we become like our older brother in God’s ever-growing family, Jesus.

George Mason was recently demonstrating from the Old Testament how Jesus himself came from a less than perfect human family.  About how, even in Christ, God’s love finds a way to bring the very best from the very worst.  It is the theme of redemption that runs from cover to cover in the Bible.  George said,  “God is love, and love will always find a way. God’s justice comes at last, but God’s grace all along the way is compensation enough in the waiting.  God is at work in mysterious ways, slowly, very slowly at times, bringing amazing grace to people who have known disgrace.  Life isn’t always fair, but God is always good (George Mason, “It’s Not About Fair,” The Wilshire Pulpit, Wilshire Baptist Church, Dallas, TX, July 28, 2002).”

Nancy’s father suffered another stroke a couple of weeks ago and her mom had tried to care for him at home.  But, it’s just not going to work.  Elmo’s mental capacity is deteriorating rapidly.  Even the most routine functions of daily living are becoming gargantuan struggles.  We had begun to fear for Betty’s health.  It’s not unusual for this kind of thing to destroy the caregiver, too.  After a particularly difficult two weeks, Nancy’s mom called and asked her to come home.  It’s time for Elmo to go to a nursing home.  Many of you have been through that difficult decision.  And, you know what we are discovering.  There is no roadmap for this.  Social workers and doctors aside, when a family comes to this place, they have to chart their own course as though no one ever had. 

Eventually, all of us, one way or another, come to a place where there is no roadmap, no well-lit pathway, no clear course.  In time, our best plans won’t be any good anymore.  But, when that day comes, we will still have this promise, “neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor (nursing home or Alzheimer’s nor old age nor) anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”  That is the will of God.  And, that’s not a roadmap.  That’s a relationship. 

No matter which way the road turns for us, Christ will be with us on it.  That is the promise of God.