Everyman: Want to go get something to eat? Her: Sure.
Everyman: Where do you want to go? Her: Wherever you want is fine.
Everyman: How about [placeholder-for-anywhere-he-names]? Her: Oh, maybe not there.
Everyman: [muttered euphemisms then resignation that she can only be known apophatically]!
At some point in 38 years of marriage, 17 years of pastoring, and 17 more years in higher education, it dawns on me that “Wherever you want is fine” and “Oh, maybe not there” combine to mean something more like “I wish you knew me well enough to know where I want to go without asking.” Of course, there being no accounting for taste, Everyman’s hope lies in the attention he has given to her previous choices and responses, pleasures and disappointments—the things she has revealed about herself.
The question every person seeking to follow God’s will must ask is—not to be trite—what God’s will is. We offer every righteous dining experience we think God would enjoy. In ancient Israel’s terms: “How about, thousands of rams? No? Ten thousands of rivers of oil? Still no? How about my firstborn for my transgression? Well, if you don’t want that, what do you want?” Like a patient (or perhaps not-so-patient) spouse, God’s answer is that Israel should already know His will; not by intuition, but because he has already plainly revealed it to them: “He has told you, O Everyman, what is good; and what does Yahweh require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”
Paul tells the Romans the same thing: that they do not have to climb into heaven or descend into the abyss to find faith or faithfulness. Instead, “the word is already near, already in your mouth and in your heart,” because he has already proclaimed it—revealed it—as the word of faith: “that if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”
God has already plainly told us in a book where he wants us to go with him. We don’t have to wonder constantly about what he has already answered permanently.
This week, may we open his book, and may he light our path. He always does, because he already did.