On the smallness of plans

Recently one of the men in our church took to the pulpit, his usual poise replaced by a hint of nervousness. The person who was to give an update on one of the missions we support was ill; this man was his replacement. "I haven't had time to prepare," he explained. I understood his dismay. He is one of those men who is well organized, and thoughtful with his statements, and always very straightforward. Ordinarily, when he speaks to a crowd he is like a guided missile zooming toward its target. But there he was, standing in front of a couple hundred people, with no preparation. I leaned into my wife and whispered, not sarcastically, "This ought to be good."

And it was. He confessed his hardness of heart toward Muslims, with whom some of our missionaries work. It choked him up, this fact springing up on him unplanned, and as he confessed it his voice caught, and he explained that it is only by grace that any one of us sitting comfortable in his salvation is not lost.

I like to think it took courage to speak the truth that way to all those people, or at least this is what I told myself as I wandered about the streets of Kansas City this weekend, trying to find the church where I was to deliver a talk about fathering. You see, I am one of those speakers as well, who likes to prepare well in advance. But the week had overtaken me, and I had finally decided to rise early the morning of the talk, avail myself of a Starbucks near the church, and compose a brilliant speech to the sound of Joni Mitchell and the smell of roasted Ethiopian Sidamo.

The church, according to GoogleMap, was only ten miles from my hotel. I left two and a half hours early. That should have afforded me ample time to prepare my speech. Instead, I got lost.

As I tried to navigate the bends and one-ways and angled off-shoot streets that must have amused the drunken madman who laid out Kansas City, I began to lose my cool. I was supposed to give a talk on fathering -- didn't God know that? I began to lose my temper. I hate being in front of a group when I am unprepared. I tried to compose my thoughts while driving, but all I could come up with was an opening joke about how having a map in Kansas City is like having a Bible in a strip joint.

Finally, half an hour before I was supposed to be at the church, I found its street, and a Starbucks. I rushed inside, placed my order, and sat down to jot at least a few notes on index cards. Then I made my way to the church, dreading what was about to transpire.

I met there with men who are striving to become better fathers. They put me up on a stage, and sat attentively, waiting. Lacking the grandiose speech with which I'd intended to afflict them, I confessed the ways I have failed as a husband and father. I told them I am trying to break generations of despair and sin, and that often I lose that battle. I explained that most of the time, I don't feel like I'm anything close to what a man ought to be. I said that while there are plenty of books on how to train children, it seems to me that their sin begins with us, and that we ought to address our own darkheartedness whenever we start to fret over their behavior. I told them my story, without an opportunity to dress it up in the way that many of us do. I waited for them to throw rotten fruit.

Instead, a 15-minute question-and-answer session scheduled at the end of my talk became an hour-long discussion. Some men confessed their own shortcomings as fathers. Others offered encouragement. I felt like I was part of something, as opposed to the feeling I had been set on, which was to direct something. I had envisioned this being about me, but even as it involved laying out more of me than I'd intended to share, it became about all of us who are trying to be better fathers. If I'd had time, I could have delivered a much better speech. But I'm thinking it's a good thing I didn't have that time.

It's funny how sometimes God does his best work by first wrecking all of our plans, isn't it?