The Road Ahead
Twenty-five years ago this week, I began a new chapter of life. As I pulled into the parking lot at Samford University, I felt “scited” - a word Glennon Doyle coined that aptly describes the experience of simultaneously feeling scared and excited. I was so “scited” about beginning my seminary journey that I promptly locked my keys in my car. Thus, AAA played a key role on my first day of divinity school.
The divine whisper that prompted me to begin this journey had come nine months earlier during Holy Week. Alone in a hot tub on the deck of a cabin in the Smoky Mountains under the light of a full moon, I suddenly sensed a call to go to seminary. My burning bush experience lacked the specificity of Moses’ call, yet the summons was clear: I was being compelled by the Spirit of God to go to seminary to prepare . . . for what, I did not know.
Years later when I came across Thomas Merton’s famous prayer, I realized how fitting his words would have been for me to pray in January 2000 as I walked into orientation at Beeson Divinity School:
“My Lord God,
I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
nor do I really know myself,
and the fact that I think I am following your will
does not mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe that the desire to please you
does in fact please you.
And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.
And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road,
though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore will I trust you always though
I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.
I will not fear, for you are ever with me,
and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.”
I truly had no idea where I was going when I arrived at divinity school. I could not see the road ahead of me. I certainly didn’t really know my 35-year-old self. My stunted vocational imagination made it difficult for me to envision how I might use my gifts in the years to come.
But I did deeply desire to please God. I did believe that God had called me. I did trust that God would continue to lead me by the right road. I did believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that God would never leave me to face my perils alone.
If I had known all that lay beyond the horizon when I began my seminary journey a quarter century ago, I wonder if I would have had the courage to drive south on I-65 from Nashville to Birmingham in response to God’s prompting. Fortunately, all that was required of me at that moment was to take the next step, do the next right thing.
Has the Spirit of God been whispering to you lately? Are you poised at the precipice, surveying a new path? You don’t have to know where the road ahead will end to step out in faith. God is ever with you. Life is not a solo journey.
