Ending Up In Egypt
It's amazing how God prepares the way for us. It is even more amazing how the way isnever what we expect. I often think that if I could lay aside my expectations about life it would be so much easier. I'm sure that once Mary and Joseph were convinced that Mary's child was the Son of God conceived by the Holy Spirit they must have had expectations about what the pregnancy and birth would be like. Perhaps they thought that God would honor the little one and that his way would be smooth and care free. Perhaps they thought there would be a slow recognition in the village that something extraordinary was happening. I'm sure they did not consider the idea that they would be forced to travel away from home to a strange city and struggle for survival... or that they would end up spending years in Egypt. Yet that is exactly the path that God chose.
I caught up with an old friend recently. When last I talked to William he was an aimless young man just out of High School. He did not know what God wanted him to do. He didn't have a grasp of his own abilities. He was drifting through life without a plan. But like all of us in grace, God had his own plan for William - and it started with the Christmas miracle.... of a blind date.
Lost in Translation
William would be the first to confess he had always been a little awkward when it came to the ladies. His approach was something of a cross between a bull horn and Archie Bunker. His problem you see, was that he spent quite a bit of time with his foot in his mouth. We often told him that he needed to tone down a bit, but he couldn't help himself. When his mouth got him into trouble he would compound it by speaking more. Every attempt at trying to "fix" his verbal indiscretions would end up making things worse. William complimenting a young lady would go something like this.
William was smooth like that. A few Christmas's ago, while William was attending Grace University, someone decided to play matchmaker and fix him up on a blind date. The girl in question was a believer but she was a Mexican national and spoke no English. The matchmaker assured William that she would tag along with a date of her own and serve as a translator. This sounded odd to William but it was worth a shot. He arrived at the location to pick up his date... but there was no translator. The matchmaker had bailed out.
Picture two people - one who knows only English and one who knows only Spanish - thrown together for an evening of food and fellowship. William, with a sense of irony I suppose, bundled her into his car and headed for (where else) a Chinese restaurant. After all, since his date couldn't understand him and he couldn't understand her, it seemed like a natural progression to have a waiter that neither of them could understand. I was laughing hysterically when William described it to me.
Now my expectations for such an evening would be limited. It's certainly a funny story but not a recipe for 2 people to fall in love and make beautiful music together. In fact, that is exactly what happened. God in his mercy had put William with a lovely girl who would not be aware of his ability to eat shoe leather every 5 minutes. The 2 of them babbled on and laughed and found ways to communicate that were basic enough to not require complex verbal skills. At the end of the evening William managed to ask her out again - although he's fuzzy on how he got the message across.
But Wait There's More
Remember how our expectations often trip us up? Amazingly, God buries little gems in us that He unearths when he needs them - and they are often a complete surprise to us. We are moving confidently (or aimlessly) down one path and God picks us up and puts us on a completely different path, where we and we discover we have the hidden resources to accomplish something completely new and different. That is an amazing thing about God. All through the Bible, people were led by God to do remarkable things, often with a sense of surprise that God would use them in that way. Think about Moses, Gideon, Joseph, David, Peter, and Philip - all of them went in directions that must have felt completely different than what they ever expected. Yet God exposed gifts in them that he had placed there for his own purposes.
This was the case with William. William had an unremarkable academic career and had never really put any effort into learning a language beyond his freshmen year of High School. Yet it turns out that with the right motivation he had a gift for languages. As he dated his new found love interest he found he was able to speak conversational Spanish with an increasing level of fluency. He went out and bought a book and boned up on the language. After a few months he was fluent enough to hold an entire conversation in Spanish - although imperfectly. After six months he proposed to his love, and to hear him tell it he confused the verb "to marry" and missed the reflexive tense. He ended up asking his love to marry him ... to somebody. Still, this hidden gem in the way he was wired blossomed under the right conditions.
Now William works as a real estate agent. His special gifts allow him to shepherd Spanish speaking clients through the process of buying a new home in the largely English-only world of real estate and finance. He has 2 adorable (and bi-lingual) children and he's learned a few other languages along the way - although none quite so well as Spanish.
I'm sure that William never expected a blind date to develop into a career and an entirely new direction for his life - but that is what happened. Just like Joseph and Mary started out heading to Bethlehem and ended up in Egypt, God takes us on his own path for his own reason. If we can just stop looking for it (whatever it is) and start trusting him, we can begin to enjoy the journey so more freely.
My Own Story
In another post I will share some of my own story. It is grimmer than the tale above but it is a powerful story of redemption. More than a decade ago I crashed hard and bitterly. Because of my own selfishness I lost my ministry and nearly lost my wife and children. Yet just like William, God had placed in me the talents and abilities that he wanted to use for my benefit and the benefit of others. As soon as I hit rock bottom he began to unearth them little by little. He is still doing so and I am still learning to let him.
Choir Director, singer, piano player, technologist and erstwhile blogger.