I don’t know about you, but I spend a surprising amount of energy trying to make life go smoothly. Maybe it’s because life has taught me how little control I really have, so I tend to grasp at the few things I think I can manage. Haha.
Maybe it’s because smooth feels like success. We make the plans, check the lists, leave a little early, make sure everything is ready, and hope the day unfolds the way we imagined it.
Sometimes it does. And sometimes it’s Tuesday.
This past Sunday we talked about Leah. Her story is woven into one of the most dysfunctional families in the Bible. Jacob is trying to get what he wants. Laban is manipulating everyone around him. Rachel and Leah are caught in a painful rivalry. If ever there was a family that looked like it was held together with duct tape and crossed fingers, this was it.
Yet somehow, in the middle of all that mess, God keeps working.
Then Tuesday came, and I had one of those days that seemed determined to remind me how little control I actually have.
For those outside our church who might read or hear this, you should know that Pat and Barbara Berney have been a huge part of the life of our church for over 60 years, and she had a long battle with Parkinson’s that ended last week. We had carefully planned a meaningful celebration of her life, and I had planned to arrive at the church by eleven o’clock to get everything ready for Barbara Berney’s funeral.
Instead, life intervened. I overslept a little. Janet needed my attention before I left. Then I saw the flashing “nearly out of gas” indicator. Then road construction threw rolling roadblocks in my path. By the time I finally pulled in front of the church building, it was after noon, and I was more than a little flustered.
Fortunately, Bryan Mitchell had arrived early and let the funeral home folks into the building for their setup. Then I discovered that for the first time in seven years, our audio-visual system had decided this would be the perfect day not to cooperate.
I spent the next twenty minutes arguing with computers. They refused to listen.
Eventually, I got the slideshow to limp along well enough, which turned out to be just fine because Pat and the family wanted private time with Barbara before everyone else arrived.
The funeral itself went well. The slideshow worked. Friends surrounded the family. We laughed. We cried. We remembered a remarkable woman.
I never really conquered the recorded accompaniment for the congregational hymns. I fumbled that pretty thoroughly and finally gave up on it. But by the end of the afternoon, nobody was talking about HDMI cables or software glitches or the music that didn’t quite cooperate. They were talking about Barbara. They were hugging Pat. They were sharing stories they hadn’t told in years.
The technology became background noise. Love became the story.
Maybe that’s often the way God works. We spend a surprising amount of energy trying to make life go smoothly. God seems much more interested in making sure love finds room to flourish, even when life is anything but smooth.
I wonder how often we mistake the frame for the picture. The frame matters. We should prepare and plan and do our best. I certainly wish everything had worked the way I intended.
But the frame isn’t the picture. The picture was a grieving family remembering they weren’t alone. A church full of people carrying one another’s burdens. Love showing up.
That was true in Tuesday’s funeral gathering. And it was true in Sunday’s Scripture.
Leah’s life wasn’t smooth. She wasn’t loved the way she longed to be. Her family situation wasn’t healthy. There were no tidy endings, especially none she knew of. Yet somehow God was at work in the middle of it all. Leah couldn’t see what God was doing. She simply had to live the next day. Only generations later would anyone realize how deeply her story had become part of God’s story.
I think that’s good news, because most of us live lives that look a lot more like Tuesday than we would care to admit. Plans change and fall through. Equipment fails. Traffic backs up. Families are complicated and downright messy. Grief doesn’t follow a schedule.
And yet, over and over again, we discover what Jacob discovered in the wilderness: “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.”
Sometimes we don’t recognize God’s presence because we’re still staring at the frame. But if we step back and take a look, we see that the picture God has been painting all along is one of grace, community, and love.
Maybe that’s something worth watching for this week—not whether everything goes according to plan, but where love becomes the real story.
Let’s pray.
Father, thank You for meeting us in the middle of ordinary days that don’t go according to plan. Help us not to become so focused on the frame that we miss the picture you’re creating through love, grace, and faithful presence. Open our eyes to see you at work, even in the interruptions. In the name of Jesus, who walked with us among the mess, Amen.
