I met with some other Christian educators in Nashville a while back, as planned. I did not expect my hanging clothes to stay in Nashville, nor Joan’s. But they did. As I drove back from Nashville late Saturday night I did not expect a flu-incipient pastor to invite me to preach for his church Sunday morning. But he did. I did not expect my 2 year old grandson visiting Sunday afternoon to have a man-bun, nor for me to like it. But he did, and I did. That’s 4 unexpected realities to 1 planned. No doubt a larger sample would produce a higher ratio.
“Wee, sleeket, cowran, tim’rous beastie, / O, what a panic’s in thy breastie! /Thou need na start awa sae hasty, / Wi’ bickerin brattle! I wad be laith to rin an’ chase thee / Wi’ murd’ring pattle!” It’s much easier to understand that opening line from To a Mouse (Robert Burns, 1785) out loud. (If you still don’t understand it, feel free to request a translation.) A line later in the poem about a farmer’s plow uncovering a field mouse is probably more familiar: “The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men / Gang aft agley.” It’s a brilliant poem, of course—one of the best known in the English language. While I am not running in the same pessimistic direction as the poem’s conclusion, a key element of the work’s primary metaphor is that we are constantly at the mercy of forces beyond our control.
Circumstances awry, we could respond with the intimidated excuses of the proverbial sloth, regarding the wind or announcing the lion without; circumstances rewarding, with the optimistic self-assurance of Luke’s landowner, tearing down barns to build bigger. Or, knowing the Lord of every situation to be our Father, we could respond in humble faith—at once by its nature both self-diminishing and confident. Jesus and Paul make it clear we should choose humble faith, one from a boat, the other a prison.
Whether because nature buckles or people buck, I pray we find this week’s fears or fights converted to faith, and us a little more like the Lion of Judah and less the tiny, trembling mouse of Burns’ field.