I returned from what I feel was a grueling but nice annual conference through a storm in Baton Rouge and an hour-long traffic jam to find that life, or death, had proceeded me.
A day earlier, a guy I spent a lot of time with in 2008-2009 was drowned earlier Tuesday morning.
I remember Isaiah Tate as a kid with enormous physical talent but a bigger heart. He played football and basketball and played them well. He lacked size for basketball, but he played bigger than he was, and he led Salmen High School to a state championship by playing big.
In football, he was a wide receiver who could go get a pass as well as anyone I've seen despite not having top-level speed. He had jumping ability, but again that big heart let him get those passes that led his team to the edge of the state final, falling just a game short.
And he's gone, days after his 21st birthday.
Drowned in another stupid accident, dead long, long before his time, though that in itself is a stupid statement because we die when we're appointed to die, I believe. I know that many would argue that God's will has nothing to do with these accidents and that He put the world to spinning and stood back and watched and all that. I know that. And somehow, though I don't believe God pushed Isaiah off that boat and let the waters take him, somehow God is involved.
If He's not, if this is all a bunch of accidents, then where are we and more importantly perhaps, where is He?
How can we deal with Isaiah 29:11, where we read 11 For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. 12 Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you?" If those sentiments are meant for a single time and place, and God has no plans for us, no personal plan laid out for us, then where the heck are we?
When Paul tells the friends he had made in the church in Ephesus, " But as he left, he promised, “I will come back if it is God’s will," was he just speaking church terms and he didn't mean it? Was he as confused and stumped by all this as my friend is or I am or we all are?
When Paul writes to the church in Rome, "in my prayers at all times; and I pray that now at last by God’s will the way may be opened for me to come to you," was he just talking rote terms?
Was most seriously was Paul wrong when he wrote, "And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God?"
If God has nothing to do with this wonderfully wacky thing we call life and death, then why pray, why worship, why have anything to do with Him? Seriously, why? If He has not part in our lives, why we do we have a part in His?
The answer, cloudy and indistinct for me as it is, is God's will ultimately is that I love Him because He loved me first. It is God's will that I do my best in all I do because He is doing His best to have me work out my salvation in a world that has complete freedom to do as it will. It is God's will that the best of everything come my way, with my limitations and my mistakes and my lack of judgment figured into the mix. Does that mean I might go out on a boat at night in rough waters and not wear a life jacket? Probably not. But Isaiah did, and that was his free will do do so.
Before he died, though, God worked in him to help others, and Isaiah did. Did God take him home? No, probably not. But I've found it highly irresponsible to speak as if I know for sure either way. My speaking for God gets me in a lot of trouble, and as near as I can figure, that's not God's will for me either.
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