I had coffee with a friend this week. We were catching up on our life stories, and life has changed considerably for both of us since we last had time to sit and talk. I almost have to chuckle in a situation like this, as I catch a friend up on the past year. Other than my mother passing away, major changes in our church (including my role here), and a summer of health issues to work through, it’s been a pretty quiet year. And by quiet, I mean a porcupine in a bubble wrap factory.
My friend expressed a lot of heartfelt encouragement about my recent shift into a Teaching Pastor role. It was a kindness to hear. Encouragement is always such a gift.
I talked about how it truly is an exciting time in so many ways. Many years ago, I went back to school, to seminary, with a resounding thought rattling around in my heart and mind: someday, I felt, the Lord was going to shift me out of “music-centric” ministry in some way. I didn’t have a firm plan or roadmap, but I knew then that I wanted more biblical and theological equipping to be ready for that time. So off to Dallas Theological Seminary I went, and I truly loved every minute of it.
I told my friend how amazed Alicia and I have been at the future we have arrived at, and how stoked we are to see this seed of an idea the Lord planted come to fruition. We are thankful to settle into this new role in this church family I love so dearly. And yet, we are so sad too. It’s been a hard year. I could not have scripted being in this role at this point, but I certainly would not have scripted how we got here either. It’s like road-tripping to Disney World… but along the way you get a flat tire, lose your wallet, and come down with the flu. That certainly leaves a mark when you walk through the gates with “It’s a Small World” blasting over you.
At this point, my friend lit up and said it reminded him of a section from C.S. Lewis’s book Prince Caspian.
Prince Caspian is the second book in the Narnia series. In the story, the four Pevensie children are pulled back into Narnia, only to find that centuries have passed. The land is under a tyrant’s rule, and Aslan has faded into legend. On their way to help the young Prince Caspian, the children reach a deep river gorge. Lucy sees Aslan signaling them to follow him, but no one else sees him, and they choose another route. It’s a hard day. They run into enemy archers, climb back the way they came, and arrive at nightfall tired and discouraged.
That night, Aslan meets Lucy alone. She asks the question that has been weighing on her: if they had followed him, would everything have turned out all right? Aslan answers, “To know what would have happened, child? No. Nobody is ever told that.” Then he points her forward. The next morning, he leads them by a path they never would have found on their own. They reach Caspian in time, the battle is won, and Narnia is set free.
My friend’s retelling of that story was so profound to me that I got chill bumps while sipping my cappuccino. The hard road didn’t change the ending. Aslan was still leading them and still bringing about his purposes, and he got them somewhere they never would have reached on their own. Everything did turn out all right, and yet Lucy still wonders how they got there.
Paul wrote with such confidence, “He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:6). I’m so often tempted to imagine that this good work of completion means God fine-tuning every area of my life until it looks like a veritable Saturday Evening Post cover. (Norman Rockwell painted those covers for decades: idealized, whimsical, basically perfect scenes of American life. Everybody smiling at the Thanksgiving table, nobody arguing about the thermostat.)
But life rarely agrees. This past year felt at times like me looking at the compartments of life and yelling at them all, “WOULD YOU PLEASE BEHAVE?” And for a Christ follower, it’s a short step from there to looking at God and asking the same.
I can’t fully hold the picture and the path of the past year. If you asked me to retrace every step and explain exactly how we got here, I’m not sure I could. Like Lucy, I may never fully understand the route. But I know who led me…and I know we’ve arrived somewhere.
There’s another moment in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, that keeps coming back to me as well. Edmund has been rescued from the White Witch, and Aslan walks with him alone, off to the side, for a long conversation. Lewis tells us nobody else heard what was said. The others only saw the result: a different Edmund walking back down the hill, ready to face his family, the battle ahead, and a throne he didn’t yet know was waiting for him.
Some of this past year has been that kind of hillside conversation: personal, intimate work between me and the Lord. Some of it still is.
But this I know: I don’t want to set up camp in a stockpile of yesterday’s manna. Paul put it this way: “Forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal” (Philippians 3:13–14). The God who began the good work hasn’t stopped working. He’s not finished. And there’s something unique about the praises you offer up on a path you could not have found on your own.