Philippians 1:3-11 (Today's New International Version)
I thank my God every time I remember you. In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.
It is right for me to feel this way about all of you, since I have you in my heart and, whether I am in chains or defending and confirming the gospel, all of you share in God's grace with me. God can testify how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus.
And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God.
God, we want to do Your will—we just have trouble sometimes figuring out what that is—open our hearts to hear You in the soft whispers and the crashes of thunder—and our eyes to see You in the leaves blowing gently in the breeze and the waves generated by the storm crashing to the shore. Lead us in Your way everlasting. Amen.
For those of us who are trying to get a deeper understanding of God’s will for our lives, I have some bad news—there have been no burning bushes spotted in the last three thousand years—no writing on any temple walls, and most of those who gain the media spotlight for even a brief moment by claiming to know God’s will for, well, whomever, tend to find themselves exposed as opportunists at best and deliberate deceivers at worst. So where does that leave us—average, well-intentioned, committed believers engaged in personal and communal journeys that we pray are directed by God?
Many of you are or were teachers and so this story may resonate with your experience. There was this teacher at a private school—a Mr. Jones who taught math. It was the custom at that school, just as it is the custom at many schools for children to give their teachers gifts at the end of the year. Mr. Jones had gotten so many gifts, most of them in boxes that appeared to hold one arithmetic-themed tie after another that he eventually quit even opening all the tie boxes. Eventually Mr. Jones retired and decided to rid himself of all those ties—he began opening the ties one by one and sure enough, most of them were animals doing equations, numbers dancing in circles, geometric drawings, you get the point. He came to one box which was definitely a tie box, but when he opened it, it held a rare antique watch. He immediately felt terrible that not only had he never opened it, he had never thanked the student who gave him such a wonderful and precious gift. He wondered how the student felt at never having his wonderful gift acknowledged—did he feel rejected, taken for granted. Mr. Jones immediately wrote a thank you note and wore the watch every day during his retirement. When asked about the watch, Mr. Jones replied, “All those years I had a wonderful gift waiting for me and I never even realized it.”
It seems likely that, just like Mr. Jones, we may overlook some of God’s most precious gifts to us that we could utilize in discerning of God’s will for our lives—particularly talents left unexplored, dreams we left behind in some other portion of our life, skills and aptitudes that we never try on for size because we fail to open all the gifts that come our way. We have all of God’s resources that we need at hand to discern God’s will, and yet, we fail to realize it. We’re still out there looking for something more—perhaps something fantastic and unmistakable, but Paul points us back to our journey and calls us to use all the gifts bestowed upon us by a loving God to discern “what is best.”
If the hidden antique watch becomes a story we can use to illuminate our own struggle to understand the process of discernment—that is, seeking and recognizing God’s will for our lives, we might decide that the answers we seek when we seek God’s will are there for us, just as they are there for all of God’s creation. The fact that we are unaware of the gifts, does not mean that they are not available for us to utilize when we seek to discern what God would have us do. Discern, a difficult word to grasp, at least for me. Mostly we think that one discerns or perceives something that is apparently concealed from our general knowledge. And, indeed, the specific ins and outs of the will of God may very well be hidden from us at least at first.
Take a look at the final paragraph of our scripture—Paul prays first for our love to grow in knowledge and in depth of insight—depth of insight—suggesting that as we grow we gain insight into spiritual things that we do not currently understand. The point of this insight is quite clearly to be able to determine or discern what is best—this discernment enables us to be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, whenever that may come to pass. Paul calls us to be filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—peace, faith, hope, joy, love—all that God intends us to be.
Paul says elsewhere that we hold our treasures in earthen vessels. Just as Mr. Jones believed that a tie box must surely hold a tie, we often feel that what we have thus far in our lives been able to do determines all that we are able to do. Meister Eckhart, a mystic in thirteenth-century Germany, said it this way: “We own a vintage wine cellar, but we never drink from it.”
Marianne Williamson, author and lecturer says it in words that force us to re-consider how we envision our gifts and our future. She states, “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us, it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
And so, before we seek to understand how to discern God’s will for our lives, it becomes imperative for us to agree to find out that God may have much more in store for us than we ever had in mind for ourselves. Many of us are more than halfway through our lives, but I daresay, that few of us are halfway through all of God’s gifts to us, given in love and abundance. But, nevertheless, we look for some kind of sign—we pray for it—I know I do: “God, give me a sign!”—I’ll take a lightning bolt, a cloud shaped like the answer, a message in a bottle, a still small voice—something, anything—that keeps me from doing the hard work of spending time in the company of a God who is happy to show me the way when I truly look and listen.
But we are human and need guidance in seeking God’s face. Several faith traditions do practice specific methods that may help or at least suggest our next steps. Quakers practice communal spiritual discernment by sitting in silence as a community—sometimes for hours at a time. Jesuit priests believe that discernment comes in the actual doing of the work of God—a simple and elemental idea. But, neither of these practices is easy or without sacrifice.
Uh-oh. Brick wall--I usually need my sign from God now, immediately or at least before I spend another night tossing and turning. I need a burning bush by tomorrow, thank you. But rarely is that the case and if it were, discernment wouldn’t be a spiritual practice which enriched our lives, it would be a capricious, unpredictable event which we would never see coming and, most likely, would miss. However, discernment is a practice-- and one that is built on and builds upon the other practices that likewise enrich our lives. Worship, study, prayer, communion, all enable us to be transformed and makes it easier to see the gifts we thought were hidden and bring them into the light.
What tie boxes do you hold deep inside yourselves—afraid to unwrap—uncertain about finding the untapped talent or creativity that God has waiting for you? What dreams do you hold in some closed off part of your heart—assuming that God could not possibly use you in those ways? When we insist against reason that a tie box must surely hold only a tie, and fail to give God the chance to lead us in new and exciting ways, we shortchange ourselves, we shortchange our world, and we shortchange our God. Let us take the risk of uncovering all that God has for us and in that discovery find a renewed passion to love and serve the Lord. Amen and amen!
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