The Adjustment Bureau.

The Christian world in North America is soaked through with Calvinism. That is the belief that God is sovereign, that God is all powerful, that God has a plan for every moment of every day of every person's life, and that God directly causes everything that happens.

We survive a car accident when two others are killed? God spared us for a reason, our Calvinist brothers and sisters would say. A couple gets pregnant, a politician loses an election, a baseball player swings the bat and makes good contact with the ball: it is all God's doing. God has a plan.

United Methodists look at God and life in a different way. We believe God is at work in history. We believe God is working to bend history in the direction of healing, justice, peace, and life. We believe God has made it very clear -the Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount- what kind of life works best. But we also believe God trusts creation -and life- to us. God gives us something we call "freewill." Our choices count. We are not puppets on a string.

The Bible is full of moments when God places a choice before people. Adam and Eve are told not to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But God gives them the freedom to obey...or disobey!

Abram and Sarai are asked by God to leave home and head hundreds of miles to the west.

Esau is asked to forgive the brother who stole his birthright.

Hagar, when a part of her wants to die because of the shameful way she has been treated by Sarah and Abraham, chooses to listen to an angel and live.

Joshua says to the people of Israel, "Choose this day whom you will serve."

Jesus says to would-be disciples, "Follow me and I will teach you how to catch people in God's net of amazing grace." Those men and women who hear his voice can either stay where they are, living their old lives, or they can follow Jesus into a new life. The choice is their's.

All through the Bible we see God respecting the freedom God has given God's people. God gives us options, God allows us to choose, God challenges us to use our best judgment and to pray, but God never forces us to be obedient or to trust or to give.

The reason this all comes to mind is because of Matt Damon's new film, "The Adjustment Bureau." It is Hollywood's attempt to frame the whole question about how free we really are. Handling freedom, working through the choices that define who we are and who we will be, is not an easy thing the film says.

Our choices count. The Bible makes that clear. Be careful...freedom is a powerful gift that can bring joy and healing or it can -if handled badly- bring misery and heartbreak.

God loves you. God chooses to restrain God's power so that your choices will matter. Don't live thoughtlessly, don't think you can do life on auto-pilot, and assume God's "plan" is to clean up every mess you or I make.

You are so loved that God not only gave you his only Son, but you are so loved that God gave you the gift of choice...of freewill.

God Is on the Other Side of the River.

We read the Bible stories so many times, perhaps, that we lose our ability to see how very real they all are. We know how the story ends, we know God shows up, and so that makes it very tough for us to see how scary it was for Abram and Sarai to pick up and head west towards Canaan. We know God is out there in Sinai, among the rocks and the dry ground and the wild wilderness, so it almost impossible for us to understand the fear in the gut of the Hebrews when Moses and Aaron led them away from the security of Egyptian slavery towards the unknown.

Where was Moses leading them? How was this going to end? They didn't really know and yet they packed their things -quickly!- and headed off. In the direction of two barriers that seemed impassable: the sea and the desert.

We've slipped into March. I am in a new place. The last time I "blogged" we were living north of highway 30. In Elkhart. Now we are south of that by a fair distance. Instead of looking out my study windows to see the St. Joseph River in Elkhart, which had become home in all sorts of deep ways, I look out my study window in Bloomington. To see a small hill on the other side of a creek. I wonder what the trees will look like, on that hill, when the leaves come in this spring.

The Christian way is a life that moves through death and discovers -when we live with God and for Jesus- resurrection on the other side. I have told close friends that my decision to be obedient to the whispers of God in the call to Bloomington meant that I have carried "the cross" of saying goodbye to people I love very, very much. The pain of that leaving was almost more than I could bear. (It was also true when we left New Haven back in 1996 for Elkhart: I thougth I was going to die. A close friend, my associate pastor there, said he thought I would never survive another move.)

Here is the discovery I have made: God is on the other side of the river. When the Hebrews, in Joshua 3, go across the Jordan River they discover God is at work on the other side of the river. There is life on the other side of the wandering time, the leaving chapter, even if it is in a place that isn't familiar as the place you have left.

Whatever river you are facing I want to tell you something I know, something I have experienced: God is on the other side of the river. God is over there in that new chapter with all of its questions and uncertainty.

I find myself being thankful. I find myself lighting up when I see the faces and hear the voices of those in Bloomington who are already becoming living treasure to me.

God is on the other side of the river. I want you to know that.