Updated on January 24, 2020
For when you don’t know what to do
Anyone remember these? I found this relic from ’90’s church camp when I was cleaning things out recently. WWJD – What Would Jesus Do? It was a phrase we teenagers were taught to think about whenever we had to make decisions in life. I am showing my age, I know. But, I’ll admit that I wore that bracelet way past the time when it was cool to do so. Because honestly, who doesn’t want to know the answer to this question? What would Jesus do?
In clear right or wrong decisions, the answer was obvious. Jesus would be kind. He wouldn’t hurt people or gossip or lie or cheat or steal. I got that part. But life is full of decisions that aren’t so obvious. Maybe you’ve stood in some of these places too and wondered. Go to this school or that one? Date this guy or that one? Be friends with these folks or those? Live in this place or that one? Take this job or that one? W.W.J.D? Yes! What would he do? I think I spent a million hours staring at that bracelet waiting for a hologram dressed like Jesus to appear and inform me about the next steps God wanted me to take.
I laugh as I look at the old thing now and wish for a little of its magic. I feel like I should update it on how things turned out.
I married the boy. We had some kids. I took the job at that school. I’m still writing words. I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up … This place in the middle of life is a strange one, and I find myself asking some of the same questions about work and calling that I had when that bracelet was a favorite companion. WWJD. The years have passed, but the questions still hang in the air with just as much weight.
The WWJD message that well meaning youth pastors of that day wanted to instill in us was a good one. But the answers? Well, finding those answers can send a perfectionist like me in circles. Because how do you ace that test? Jesus was perfect. And maybe you’ve felt this too? The way that you can stand in the middle of your regular life looking for answers and become paralyzed with how wrong this could go.
Even in the practical application book of James, there are no verses about which job you should take or when you should allow your kid to have an iPhone or what career path you should pursue or how exactly to love your difficult people. All of that stuff seems to be missing.
So how are we to make wise decisions? What if every choice seems good? Or what if a choice must be made but neither one holds any goodness?
Perhaps all these years have taught me nothing. Why are decisions still so hard? I ask a friend, and she laughs. “Because,” she says, “you make a decision like you think God is withholding the perfect answer until you guess it correctly.” She waits for me to squirm a bit and then she goes on, “Leigh, we follow a God we can’t see and trust in a voice we struggle to hear. It is hard. But it can be downright impossible if you walk through your days convinced that you serve a God who is hiding all the answers from you. Maybe you need to learn to change your question.”
Her words resonate with a pitch that stings.
She’s right. I play a holy guessing game with the Creator of the universe. And I wonder why I can’t win. What was it she said about changing my question?
Maybe it should work like this. W.D.J.D.– What Did Jesus Do? If the The Bible is the word of God and Jesus is the Word made flesh, then our study guide? It is him. His words, his actions, his prayers, his voice. It is all there. I just needed to look. What did Jesus do?
He embraced the lowly, the outcasts, the sick. Jesus ate with sinners and tax collectors. He went to places no one would go and healed people no would touch. He walked into the crowds, into the storms and towards tombs filled with the stench of death. . He told stories, climbed mountains, slept on boats and wept with those he loved. He used his breath, his words and his touch to take messages of life into every space and to point back to himself as the answer to all the questions.
I am the bread of life. I am the light of the world. I am the door. I am the good shepherd.
So maybe it is less about perfect answers and more about where my eyes are when I am taking the test. Am I looking at Jesus?
I smile at that old bracelet and stick it back in the box. No magic answers have appeared. The day still holds a million little decisions about what teenagers can and cannot do and what this crowd of men will eat for dinner. And some big decisions still sit unmade in my heart. Maybe I’ll pick the right thing or maybe I’ll take a wrong turn and veer off course.
I honestly don’t know what Jesus would do if he was me, or what he would tell you to do, but I am beginning to hear him differently:
I didn’t come so that you could get all the answers right. I didn’t come so that you would always know what to do. I am bigger than that. I came so that you would have life and have it to the fullest. I came so that you could walk into storms, jump out of boats and go into dark places knowing that I am always with you. I came so that your eyes don’t have to always be on the right answers, but on me. It’s not about knowing what I would do. It’s all about learning to know me.
“The Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood. We saw the glory with our own eyes; the one-of-a kind glory; like Father, like Son. Generous inside and out; true from start to finish.” (John 1:14 The Message)
“It’s not about knowing what I would do. It’s all about learning to know Me.”
Such encouragement for the every day and the bigger decisions of life. Thanks, Leigh!