Labor Day Holiday

(Luke 1.1-19)

I grew up believing a form of the old adage - 'hard work creates good luck.' Actually, it was modified early on by observing that 'working smart is better than working hard.'

I had seen quite a variety of work ethics modeled by various extended-family members. Some worked very hard, with various results. Some worked very little, with various results. A few worked smart, with various results.

Since there didn't really seem to be any predictable percentage of favorability in the results for those who worked hard over those who worked smart...I became more inclined toward the 'working smart' proposition.

One thing was for certain in my family of origins - my mom and dad expected one to work to achieve whatever destiny one might expect to be out there!

How could it be, then, that someone would work to achieve one's destiny only to die trying. That can't be right, can it? Wouldn't God help the one who is 'helping' himself?

Yet I read of one who was destined - and dead in his early thirties...no, I'm not talking about Jesus. While it could be said of Jesus, it could also be said of so many people down through history.

Have you ever thought about this thing of being 'destined?' It's a subject with which philosophers and theologians have grappled for millennia.

The Bible says that John (the Baptist) was "to turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous--" An angel even appeared to John's father to tell him this, and yet it seems that John died without having done that. At least we don't have any record of that kind of response to his preaching.

Was John the Baptist a failure? Did he do something wrong? Did he make a wrong turn at some point and miss his destiny? Did he not work hard enough...or smart enough?

Have you accomplished much or any of the stuff that you thought you would do with your life? What are the odds that those feelings of destiny you once had will actually happen now?

Wow, for most of us those are really, really depressing thoughts. I have enough feelings of inadequacy and failure without thinking that I've completely failed at my 'destiny.'

Maybe I have completely failed...that's one of the things that terrifies me about the 'judgment.'

Perhaps John, while in prison questioning whether Jesus was really the One sent from God, also questioned whether he had wasted his own life - whether he had somehow been sidetracked and missed the whole point of his life.

Maybe he thought along those lines...I wouldn't doubt it, it would be human. I've certainly had those thoughts and there wasn't any angel building high expectations by announcing my birth and destiny.

What I do know is that history has viewed John as the last of the Old Testament prophets and the greatest since Elijah. Perhaps unknown to John and to us there were fathers who became loving to their children and perhaps there were foolish folks who turned to those who were wise...perhaps, we don't know.

Perhaps there are those who will say wonderful things of you when you are gone - things that you had hoped for but believed fell far short of what could have/should have been.

Perhaps. But we can't get the opportunity to do it over, we only have now. Not to denigrate work, it definitely has its place, but there is something overarching all of this in the hands of Someone overseeing all of this - and it is His ultimate review that will determine whether or not we achieved this thing called Destiny.

Perhaps that is what Jesus was wrestling with in the garden when He prayed, "Never-the-less, not my will but Thine be done." In this veil of flesh it might be that none of us can even begin to understand our Destiny.