When I think about God's plan and God's will, several things come up.

The first is a passage from the Old Testament book of Isaiah. God says to anyone who will listen,

"I don't think the way you think.
The way you work isn't the way I work. . .
"For as the sky soars high above earth,
so the way I work surpasses the way you work,
and the way I think is beyond the way you think."
(Isaiah 55.8-9, The Message)

In other words, if I think I know who God is and what God wants, I need to think again. Isaiah's words tell me that two of the best names for God are Holy Surprise and Holy Mystery. Because as long as God is a God of surprises and mystery, then I can't convince myself or anyone else that I know beyond a doubt what God's will is in any situation. Thinking I can speak with certainty about God's will always ends up causing harm.

Which brings up a second point about God's will. United Church of Christ pastor William Sloan Coffin went through something no parent should have to go through. He had to attend the funeral of his 24-year-old son. In the first sermon he gave after his son died in a car crash, Coffin said, "Normally kind people would talk about Alex's death and say, "I just don't understand the will of God." In response to such comments, Coffin said, "The one thing that should never be said when someone dies is, 'It is the will of God.' Never do we know enough to say that. My own consolation lies in knowing that it was not the will of God that Alex die; that when the waves closed over the sinking car, God's heart was the first of all our hearts to break."

We don't know what to say when something awful happens. We don't know where God is when something awful happens. And so we try to make sense of it all and try to hold on to our faith by saying it's God's will or it's God's plan. When it's probably a lot more faithful to say what William Sloan Coffin said. When people die too young, when awful things happen, God's heart is the first to break. God didn't need another angel. God didn't call the person we love home. God wasn't trying to prove something through a genocide or a war. When cruelty and agony seem to be all we see and know, God's heart is the first to break.

The third thing this question brings up for me is the promise of the prophet Jeremiah. Jeremiah speaks to residents of Jerusalem who have been captured and sent to Babylon. They feel like God has abandoned and rejected them. They have no hope. Jeremiah speaks God's word to them: "Surely I know the plans I have for you, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope" (Jeremiah 29.11). God has hopes and plans for us that are bigger than anything we can imagine by ourselves.

So how do we know what God's will, plans, and dreams for us are?

I started to answer that question this week by going through the Bible and finding some of my favorite passages. Passages about God requiring us to do justice and love kindness and walk humbly with Her. But then I realized that process had no integrity. Because while I was picking passages I knew showed us what God's will was, I was ignoring passages right beside them that I didn't agree with. In the book of Romans, Paul writes, "Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good . . . extend hospitality to strangers" (Romans 12.9-13). This has to be God's will, right? But right after that, Paul writes, "Let everyone be subject to governing authorities; for . . . those authorities that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed, and those who resist incur judgment" (13.1-2). What's he talking about? When the political and religious authorities of his day told Jesus to shut up, he kept talking. He resisted. Which shows me that I can't talk about God's will by saying "These passages show us what God's plans for us are, while these other ones are just wrong." That doesn't get us very far.

Because that's how the Bible wars get started. We enter the ring, our favorite Bible translation in hand. Hurling our favorite passages at each other. "Jesus says, 'Peace I leave with you'" (John 14.27) is our first thrust. How can anyone disagree with that? But while we self-confidently strut around the ring and soak in the crowd's support, our opponent surprises us with a swift upper cut: "Jesus says, 'I didn't come to bring peace, but a sword'" (Matthew 10.34).

So defining God's will by quoting our favorite passages doesn't finally work. Because there will always be passages other faithful Christians can find that seem to contradict the ones we like. And then how do we agree on how we discover and live out God's will?

I think the one thing all Christians might be able to agree on about God's will is something that is both basic and something I've hardly ever heard talked about. The Bible is the story of a God who is reaching out to people. Throughout the pages of the Bible, we hear the story of God searching for a people. God is looking everywhere for people who will let themselves be found (Samuel Dresner, editor. I Asked for Wonder: A Spiritual Anthology of Abraham Joshua Heschel. NY: Crossroad, 1983, p. xii). God searches for people who will hear Her voice . . . and say, "Here I am. I want You to find me." God's plan, God's will, is that we let God find us.

Listen to what our Bible readings say about this God who always searches for us.
"I've made myself available to those who haven't bothered to ask.
I'm here, ready to be found by those who haven't bothered to look.
I kept saying, 'I'm here, I'm right here' to a nation that ignored me.
I reached out day after day to a people who turned their backs on me,
People who make wrong turns, who insist on doing things their own way.
They get on my nerves, are rude to my face day after day,
Make up their own kitchen religion, a potluck religious stew.
They say, 'Keep your distance. Don't touch me'" (Isaiah 65.1-3, 5)

A lot of men and women of doubtful reputation were hanging around Jesus, listening intently. The Pharisees and religious scholars were not pleased - not at all pleased. They growled, "He takes in sinners and eats meals with them, treating them like old friends." Their grumbling triggered this story from Jesus.
"Suppose one of you had a hundred sheep and lost one. Wouldn't you leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the lost one until you found it? When found, you can be sure you would put it across your shoulders, rejoicing, and when you got home call in your friends and neighbors, saying, 'Celebrate with me! I've found my lost sheep!' Count on it - there's more joy in heaven over one sinner's rescued life than over ninety-nine good people in no need of rescue.
"Or imagine a woman who has ten coins, and loses one. Won't she light a lamp and scour the house, looking in every nook and cranny until she finds it? And when she finds it you can be sure she'll call her friends and neighbors: 'Celebrate with me! I found my lost coin!' Count on it - that's the kind of party God's angels throw every time one lost soul turns to God" (Luke 15.1-10).

More than anything else, I hear in the stories of the Bible the same message: God is searching for us, and God's deepest hope is that we let ourselves be found. When we pray each week, "Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven", what I think we're saying first is that God give us the courage and strength and imagination to let Her find us. And claim us as Her beloved children. And name us as disciples of Jesus in whose name we are baptized. And in whose friendship we are called to find our life and hope.

So before we talk about how we're supposed to live, before we talk about doing anything and making plans and taking control like the good Type A personalities many of us are, God instead invites us to stop. And not do anything, or plan anything, or take charge of anything, or think anything. If we are serious about trying to do God's will and live into God's plan and God's dreams for us, first we let God find us.

It is profoundly un-American, this letting God find us. Because we pride ourselves in being in charge of ourselves. We pride ourselves in not taking orders from anyone. We define ourselves by our independence and our autonomy. We don't want anyone telling us what to believe or think or do.

But the God of Jesus Christ, the God of the Bible, the God whom we worship, searches us out. And asks us to let Her find us. And surrender our will, our dreams, our plans to Her. To be used as She wishes. To go where She sends us. To lay aside our plans for ourselves. And place our lives in Her hands. And say, "Your love is what I have longed for all my life. I give myself to You. I am Yours. Do with me what you will. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven."

I know this is an abstract idea. So it might help for you to ask yourself, When has a dream, a person, an idea really grabbed hold of you? When have you found yourself consumed by a passion or a love? When have you felt truly alive or truly joyful? When have you felt like everything you have to give was being called out of you? That might be a way God has searched out for you, and a time you've let God find you. It's not a one-time thing, like I let God find me once and I'm then always giving myself over to how she wants to dream through me. I think it's a daily prayer, a daily invitation. God, let me let you find me this day. Let me be your instrument. Dream through me, hope through me, make your will alive through me.

A person of deep faith shared these words with me. Though she might not use these words to describe herself, I am sure she has let God find her.

At first, it was just a real struggle and very humbling try to accept the notion that God's plans for me were different than my plans for me. It was also hard to understand how God could stand by while so many huge losses happened all at once. Then, as time passed, I started to believe that even though he may have not planned the things that happened, he would see me through them -- that was the first step -- I could stop blaming him for "human" error and started to think he might be there to help pick up the pieces.
But the real epiphany (and the greatest time of humility) came when I realized that it was actually possible that he could envision hope and a future for me that I couldn't ever have imagined on my own -- that even in my most self-absorbed moments of grandeur; what he had in mind for me could potentially be better than my wildest imagination.
And then came the further notion that he must really love me if he was actually going to bring greater gifts into my life than I could even have asked for myself (because I figured I was capable of great selfishness and greed).
And once I got there, I realized that I had always envisioned God in man's image, which was totally unfair, because in that vision, I was completely limiting God to what my imagination, my words, my language, could envision, and that was keeping God very small, and keeping my faith small too.

Letting God find her, this woman let God's love enfold her. She let God's love open her to a wildly larger God. Which freed her to imagine a wildly larger dream for herself. For what God could dream of doing through her. Letting God find her, being enfolded in a love whose depth she could never imagine, this woman received a faith whose God was large enough to hold all her losses. A faith whose God offers healing. And the impossible possibility of having plans and dreams and hopes for her to help heal in others the losses that could have destroyed her.

May it be so for you and me. Amen.