Texas?!?!...

"Now the Lord said to Abram, 'Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great so that you will be a blessing...' So Abram went" -Genesis 12:1-4

"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference." -The Road Not Taken, Robert Frost

Big decisions are tough. Especially when you're choosing between good options.

When I realized that my time had come to leave Greenville and Berea Friendship UMC, the little church that raised me in youth ministry, I made a deal with God (disclaimer: don't do that. You'll ALWAYS lose.) But I bargained with God, and I said that I would go wherever God sent me. I'd go to Washington. I'd go to South Dakota. I'd go to Maine. Heck, I'd go to Malaysia. I'd go ANYWHERE.

Except Texas!

I gave God 99.98% of the map to work with as long as he didn't send me to Texas. Oklahoma? Great! Louisiana? Wonderful! Mississippi? Wouldn't be thrilled, but I'll take it. I just didn't want to go to Texas.

Why? There's no good reason I suppose. I just got a vibe that said, Martin+Lone Star State=Two Cans of Refried Beans in a small tent on a hot night (i.e. not good.)

So I started looking for new places. I said, "God, I know my time here in Greenville is up, so let me know where the next step should be and I'll go there." And the answer became Washington, D.C. and I was ecstatic. I was offered admission and full-tuition to Wesley Theological Seminary to study youth ministry while getting to actually work in a church with teenagers. In a city I loved. It was perfect.

Then one night as I was telling a small group of neighborhood guys I met with about D.C., one of the guys asked me if I'd been praying about it. "Well," I thought, "I made a bargain with God a while back, and this seems perfect." But no, once the acceptance had come through, I'd never stopped to ask if this was the right thing, the place on the map where I was supposed to go. So that night I went out to the golf course at Furman and found a green with an open view of the night sky, and I started praying. "God," I said, "this situation in Washington sounds perfect, and I'm pretty positive it has to be the right spot. But if for some reason it's not, let me know and we'll keep looking."

I never should have done that.

The next day around noon, I got a letter from the director of admission at Wesley that said something to the effect of "we'd still love to have you, but your scholarship is not going to be the same because the youth ministry program had to be put on hold because some things fell through." I was floored! This had been the answer. The plan was set. But God had other things in mind.

Later that day, I got an e-mail from an old friend in Nashville telling me about a youth ministry job in Fort Worth, Texas. TEXAS!! He didn't know what my plans were, but he thought it'd be a great fit for me and that I should pursue it.

Well, needless to say, the tables had turned. The great plan to go to Washington and be the world's greatest youth minister were frozen. And the one place on the map I had promised I'd never let God move me? Well, I called the church. And within two weeks I was in Fort Worth for an interview. And a week later I'd taken the job. The job in Texas.

God's made lots of promises through history. But rarely, if ever, has God done what those who were following expected. The Jews were looking for a king to end the reign of Rome over their land. And God sent a carpenter. The Israelite army, facing a giant in Goliath, needed a strong warrior to stand up to him. And God sent a boy with a sling and a rock. Moses planned to live out his days herding sheep. And God sent him back to face Pharaoh and the whole of Egypt with nothing but a staff and a promise.

As a young man, I'm sure that Abram expected not much more from life than to live on his family's land and inherit what his father would leave him while he tended the sheep and take care of the crops. That's a pretty normal, reasonable, everyday expectation. But God had other ideas. So God called out to Abram and told him to leave his land and his father's house and everything he knew behind and to go to where God was leading him. Where was that exactly? God didn't say! HA! But God did say, "I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing."

God wasn't just leading Abram on a wild goose chase with no purpose. God was sending Abram to go be a blessing to everyone he met. And God was going to bless him in every step of his journey. That's not to say the road would be easy, but when Abram relented, he became the father of God's chosen people.

And I'm sure Jonah was content to stay wherever he was in Israel. In fact, I know he was. When God told Jonah to go to Ninevah to cry out against it, Jonah was so overwhelmed and so scared that he ran and got on a boat going 180 degrees in the opposite direction. But God's not through with him, so he throws up a great storm and Jonah ends up in the belly of a large fish. And in the belly of that fish Jonah realizes that even there, God has not forgotten him.

So he's released. And he goes to Ninevah and cries out. And the people change their ways. And Jonah is beside himself! If this was what was going to happen, then why didn't God just go ahead and do it without him? But that wasn't the point. God had a big plan and wanted Jonah to be a part of it! God didn't need Jonah. But Jonah needed God.

I feel like Jonah a lot. I don't always want to go where God is leading. And sometimes I don't. I run just like Jonah. Because, when I imagine it, I can see the story of my future. I can project where I'll be and who I'll be with and what I'll be doing. That's the stuff that dreams are made of right. I mean, we grow up thinking about who we're going to marry and what our job is going to be and where we're going to live (I'm still holding out for a space colony on the moon before I die.)

The problem is, throughout scripture, God over and over again takes on the job of re-writing people's futures. Abram left his home and went off to a promised land he'd never even seen. Jonah ended up in the belly of a whale and traveling to Ninevah. The disciples, simple fishermen, dropped their nets to follow a rabbi they'd only just met.

When we invite God to point our direction, we've got to recognize that the direction God chooses is likely not going to be the place he had imagined or hoped. It's probably not going to be the dream that we had imagined. It probably won't be comfortable at first. And our futures, those cherished aspirations and hopes we hold so dear, might get re-oriented.

But, I have to tell you I've never regretted letting God disrupt my plans for something much bigger than even my imagination could ever come up with. I've found tremendous friends and a deep sense of community. I've gotten to work with great people and the greatest collection of teenagers and families you could ever ask for. I'm two years into my master's degree in divinity. And all of it in Texas.

So may you leave your future unwritten and offer God the pen. May we begin ever so slightly to lose control of our destinies and open ourselves to new possibilities we've never even conceived of. May we, just like Abram, hear the promise in God's gentle whisper reminding us that the story is yet unfinished, and the chapters yet unwritten, but that the promise remains, "I will make of you a blessing so that you may be a blessing to all you meet." And may we everyday embrace that promise and experience its hope.

forever unfinished...