Moving on to Plan G, the God Plan.

I am the kind of person who really likes to hit a mark.  Whether it is checking off a list or perfectly duplicating Martha Stewart’s Peter Rabbit cake, I love replicating excellence.  I also have trouble coloring within the proverbial lines.  Yes, it is an interesting dichotomy, and my brain is a playground of diversity which is most often a ping pong match between organization and innovation.  However, if there are enough undercurrents/challenges all bets are off.  Then it becomes a bob and weave of programming.  

https://goo.gl/images/hgXDu7

This summer did not really go according to "the plan,"  after all life happens.  You've heard of Plan B, right? We ended up punting the (A through) “K Plan” aka the “Kat Plan” in its many manifestations.  I had a beautiful plan for coping with absences and summer staffing realities…and then after “Plan A” comes “Plan B” and so on.   I then realized we had skipped “Plan G.” Plan G looks different because it is different.  Eventually I gave up the ping pong match of challenge-accommodation and ended up with something that resembles one of my favorite shows, “American Ninja Warrior” if it were to be created for CE--CENW.  For one thing, you see, ANW, is an individual performance, whereas CENW is a team effort, but their course requires fitness and nimbleness that applies muscle memory under pressure.  It struck me that these gifts and skills are just the thing for a Sunday School teacher, shepherd, coordinator; then it struck me that these are gifts and skills for our daily lives.  

“Spiritual Fitness” is achieved by building on learned skills or truths.    “You can’t run before you crawl,” we are told.  Remembering that you and  the person standing right in front of you (where you want to stand) are loved unconditionally and created by God could inform how you interact with them. For example, you might stand with/next to rather than stand on/instead of.  It’s a balancing act of deft choice and action when you actually see the person before you.  You ask, “How do I hang on to who I am and reach out simultaneously remembering who you are?” 

“Service Nimbleness” is achieved by giving up our own individual perfection.  Replicating details is wonderful, aka doing it right, but focusing on every detail is overwhelming.  First you have to learn to bake a cake before you tackle Peter Rabbit.  However, it is knowing that it is ok NOT to make the fondant that frees you to move on to the details that will convey the messages, “Yum! It’s a Garden!” Selecting which stones to touch and the ones to skip over will get you over the water, and selecting which  programmatic tasks  to pick up  or to ignore is essential  to providing hospitality instead of a completed checklist on Sunday morning.    

Brown County State Park by K.G.Barden

All of that choosing, knowing, seeing, and selecting gets repeated weekly, daily, hourly.  I find that after enough repetitions we may not agonize over whether we would be able to return perfectly whatever was served our way; we begin responding rather than volleying.  This summer, I realized that by moving on to “Plan G” we were present; we were open, and we were victorious. We were not duplicating another person’s work; we were victorious in being the presence God intended for that time and that place.  That is the God Plan. Victorious in God not by our own works. So the Summer of Seventeen at Second turns out to be a victory not for me, or the program, or even the church.  It was a victory for the work of the Holy Spirit moving us in and through the world in which we live and move and have our being. It wasn't precise, but it was perfected through faith. 

Let’s hear it for the God Plan!  It is "Grace on Fire" instead of "Grace under Fire."  Now, where’s the buzzer at the top of the wall? 

By włodi from London, UK (The Big Red Button  Uploaded by Yarl) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

The God Plan:  Isaiah 57:14  "Build up, build up, prepare the road! Remove the obstacles out of the way of my people."