‘It is the will of God,’ says a friend and that is the end of the matter. He is speaking of a choice of policy, of a decision that has been made. It is done. There is no denying it. We now have to make the best of it. Put in those terms there is no more to be said. Who are we know any better? But the Christian faith is not put in those terms by any means.
Ask a Jew what the will of God is and he will say: read the Torah (the Law). There we shall find the directions, the guidance, we need for life. If we follow that advice ourselves, we shall be dealing with the big moral questions like honouring our parents, our marriage partners and our neighbours. In our choice of career we shall consider what talent or aptitude we may have and we shall probably recognise that we, like most of us, are able to earn our living in a variety of ways; it doesn’t much matter which. We shall also be spared the trivialising that sometimes hampers us when we are looking for guidance. There will be no agonising over whether to know which colour God would have us paint the front door or what we shall name our offspring.
What we are doing is recognising that there are many decisions we can happily leave with God. We trust in his providence. We are more anxious to see the will of God being done than we are to know what that will is. The will of God is part of the infrastructure rather than the superstructure of the Christian faith. The Lord’s Prayer makes this clear.
The infant Church sought to know the will of God by drawing lots. (Acts 1). They did not carry on with this procedure. Paul as recorded in Acts 21.10-14 heard a prophetic warning from Agabus but proceeded with his planned journey to Rome in spite of it. He did have remarkable visions but he used common sense and determination in seeking to implement the commission he had been given.
We Christians have our own Torah: the Sermon on the Mount. The obligations we find there can be expressed as creative love. When we are told that the meek will he guide in judgment, we know that to achieve Christian maturity we are to practise good judgment and keep the array of abilities, advice, circumstances and conscience in place. In effect that will ensure that as far as can be we are becoming the kind of people who are forwarding the will of God. That is more important than theorising about what that will may be. It concerns the kind of people we are.
TESTIMONIES
Video testimonies by church members are one feature of the St Mary’s Wollaston, near Wellingborough, Northants. website. Alpha is another. St Mary’s is one of four churches in the group. Adrian Morton, Vicar, was a BT engineer before being ordained.
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