I’m a planner. I like to have a schedule and a to-do list, and when I put my head on my pillow at night, I rest better when I know I have accomplished what I set out to do that day. Of course, in light of the recent global pandemic, planning has become much more difficult. Whereas I used to thrive under a regular routine, there is little about my day that has routineness or regularity. We have tried to create new family schedules to add structure, but on a good day, that plan is only followed loosely. We wake up each day to find out what the home-assigned schoolwork will be, as well as what the government’s official’s latest directives are. When we think we can anticipate what is on horizon, we learn that our picture is murky at best.
It is tempting to become overwhelmed because of the uncertainty. We don’t know how long we will be directed to self-isolate, and we don’t know when normal activities will start to resume. For many people I know, their temptation towards anxiety is even stronger because it is impossible to anticipate how their jobs will be affected if this situation continues unabated. Even if I start to mentally make plans for what we will do once we are back to our routines, I quickly realize the futility. I don’t even know what month it might be when that occurs, nor can I rightly anticipate how the world and my world may be different because of the road we had to traverse to get there.
Our inability to anticipate what lays ahead can lead to a kind of paralysis. Because we don’t know what next month, next week, or even tomorrow holds, we aren’t sure how to go about today. Of course, the reality is that our uncertainty is nothing new; we have never been able to predict what will happen in the next minute – let alone what will happen when the sun rises anew. But in our current situation, we feel this inadequacy more acutely, and as a result, we may respond to it with a greater degree of inaction.
So what should we do? As I have pondered this, what repeatedly comes to mind is some advice I once heard from a friend who had been on this Earth a lot longer than me. It turns out it mirrors the advice that Elisabeth Eliot gave her daughter (as reported in her book, “Suffering is Never for Nothing”) and the advice that I am reliably told is given by Anna in Frozen 2 (I haven’t seen it yet). We need to do the next right thing.
Now considering this instruction is found in a Disney movie, it may sound contrite. It should be noted, however, that long before an animated princess sang it, the advice was given by far more trustworthy sources, as noted above. Even more importantly, this is the pattern that we see in Scripture. Although there were times that God gave His people glimpses into what would happen down the road as part of His divine plan, that was the exception and not the rule. Far more often, God called people to do the next thing, and to trust in Him for what would happen after that. Whether this is Abram being called to an unknown land (Heb. 11:8), Jonah being instructed to go warn Nineveh (Jonah 1,3) , three young Jewish boys obeying God instead of bowing to foreign idol (Dan. 3), the disciples being called to follow Christ (Mt. 4:18-22), or Peter being called to meet with Cornelius (Acts 10:19) – time after time, God called His people to do the next thing, without revealing how He would use their obedience to further His plan. As Shadrach, Meshach, and Abdednego told the king when they refused to worship a false god – they knew that God could save them, but they trusted in Him even if He didn’t (Dan. 3:16-18). What would happened as a result of their faithfulness was not assured – but the fact that God would use their obedience for His glory was. And that guarantee was sufficient for them.
As evident by these biblical examples, and many more, our inability to discern the entirety of God’s plan shouldn’t prevent us from doing what we know we are to do. It is unlikely, however, that for most of us the next right thing will be of the same magnitude as these biblical accounts. For us the next right thing may be sending an encouraging text to a friend, sacrificing “our” time to serve our kids or spouse, folding the next load of laundry, or wrapping up that dreaded project at work. It may also be daily engagement in a spiritual discipline like reading the Bible, memorizing Scripture, or spending dedicated time in prayer. While we may think avoiding these tasks are inconsequential compared to those in the biblical examples just reviewed, we tend to forget that the Bible only gives us some details of each person’s life – it doesn’t convey every time that these individuals did the next right thing leading up to the moment of import. In other words, the reason they were inclined to faithfully obey God when it seemed to really matter is because they had a pattern of obedience long before that. Or as Jesus said, because they were faithful in little things, they would also be faithful with much (Lk. 16:10).
So if we are tempted to spend our sequestered time at home relentlessly checking the news, mindlessly scrolling through social media, binge-watching shows, or absorbed in self-pity, overwhelmed with our lack of perspective on what the future will hold, let us run from that temptation with speed. We may not know all that we need to do in the days, weeks, and months ahead, but we likely do know what needs to be done next. And if we are faithful to obey God in that, He will use our pattern of obedience during this time to accomplish much for the purposes of His Kingdom, in ways that we cannot even anticipate as we trust Him for what the future will hold.
(Postscript – As I was working on this post, my sister shared a post that she had written with the exact same title that I was going to use. I consider it an honor to be thinking along the same lines as her, and although I avoided reading her post until after I had finished mine, I couldn’t let the opportunity pass by to point out the providential alignment, and to share her post too.)
