“Therefore I want you to know that God’s salvation has been sent to the Gentiles, and they will listen!” (Acts 28:28)

My family got lost in the woods in Upstate New York on a snowmobile trip when I was 14. We missed a turn when attempting to reach a remote hunting lodge. As the day wore on, our party of nine abandoned one machine after another, doubling up and ditching supplies to preserve gas, in hopes of coming out somewhere safe before our luck ran out. As the late-night cold set in and a couple of us were showing signs of hypothermia, my dad built a fire, and we kids all melted the backs of our snowsuits, trying to sleep as close as we could to the life-saving warmth.

We were exhausted and elated when we came out of the woods the next day to find ourselves at a bar/restaurant/post office called Number 9—a one-establishment town in the middle of nowhere, deep in the forest. We were thankful no one was hurt or injured, but our misadventures derailed our journey, and we never made it to the hunting cabin.

In his letter to believers, James points out the uncertainty of the plans we make: Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.”Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that” (James 4:13-15).

In Acts 28, Paul comes to the end of his misadventures, and his party emerges unharmed. (Lucky for my dad, poisonous snakes don’t hide in brush piles in the freezing temps of Northern New York—one of many ways our misadventure didn’t compare to Paul’s.) Whether it’s the self-inflicted hardships of leaving safety in winter or the unpredictable hardships of storms and fellow travelers’ bad decisions, when our plans are disrupted, we may wonder if we are headed where God intended.

But God intended for Paul to make it to Rome. By the end of Acts, he has traveled from the heart of Judaism, Jerusalem, to the heart of the known world at that time, Rome. The stage is set for the Gospel to go from being a sect everyone is disparaging (vs. 22) to being spread to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8).

I thank God that, despite the cold, he delivered our family to safety. Even more, I thank God that, despite all the obstacles, he delivered Paul to Rome, so the Good News could spread beyond the borders of Judaism, eventually reaching across cultures and borders, across oceans and continents, to motivate a church in central Iowa to operate on the same mission as Paul—to make heaven more crowded!

Reflection:

  • What is the biggest misadventure you’ve experienced? How were you delivered? How does your situation illustrate the wisdom of James?
  • Who told you about Jesus? How far back can you trace the roots of your faith? When you share Jesus’ love with others, you start the next branch of faith. How do you imagine your legacy will look 100 or 1,000 years from now? What borders and boundaries can you see it reaching past?
  • How did your answer to the first question make your hopes for the second possible? Maybe you didn’t say “if it’s the Lord’s will” at the time, but looking back, do you think it was the Lord’s will?