A devotion about deciding on the big things and worrying less about the details. In a hurry? Scroll to the bottom to read The Big Idea – a summary of what this devotional is all about.
How do I plan for the future when I don’t know what the future holds? A devotion.
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Who knew that a dish of yellow plastic blocks could mark the boundary between Before and After.
It was such an innocent moment.
Without a nursery volunteer on duty at church that day, my friend and I were folded into kid-sized chairs around a knee-high table watching our two-year-old sons play. The boys bobbled around the room, scouting plastic blocks, grimy toy telephones and escape routes.
Then the fateful moment arrived.
I still remember it with a hitch in my chest.
My friend’s son, Karl, carefully piled yellow plastic blocks in a bowl and presented it to his mother. “Here’s scrambled eggs, mommy.” Dramatic slurping noises followed as his mother devoured her imaginary breakfast.
And just like that, our lives changed as I was struck with a thought: Karl just pretended to make food. Luke has never done imaginary play. What else can’t Luke do?
Underneath the shin-bruising table, Luke lay on his back and kicked the underside of the table so it pitched and bucked like a poltergeist. He makes plenty of noise, I thought, but rarely says a word. Actually, he almost never says a word. I glanced between Luke and Karl as the truth sank heavily in my heart: Luke wasn’t developing typically.
Those thoughts turned into medical evaluations that produced reams of paper with endless data that all spelled out the same answer: we were an autism family.
Our “Before” was only a memory. “After” stretched ahead of us toward an unbroken horizon.
Standing on the edge of Before and After felt like wandering in a desert, holding Luke’s hand, and being told to “Go.” Go where?
- How do I help my son walk toward a good life – a Promised Land?
- How do I fight enemies who try to stop me from guiding Luke into that place of hope?
- What can I do that will really impact Luke’s future?
- What was the most important thing to know?
It was a featureless landscape. Where do we go when there is no road?
My strategy was to overwhelm the enemy by sheer numbers.
So I devoured autism books, pored over his evaluations, and planned special education goals with his school team like generals reviewing battle plans. If our life Before autism was gone, then I needed to know as much about life After autism as possible.
If I had details, then maybe I could plan for this new life. Then maybe I wouldn’t be so afraid.
Do you ever feel confused and afraid at the edge of Before and After? So did the Israelites.
There they stood at the threshold of the Promised Land. A mass of a million or more faces with their backs to the desert and their eyes on the mountain.
The Israelites were about to leave the Before of the wilderness to enter the After of a different life. Today they would hear God’s last instructions on this side of the Promised Land. Tomorrow open warfare would begin as they wrenched the land away from its inhabitants. “After” held fear and hope in equal measures.
What did God’s people need to know? What was the most important command God could give them as they stood on the edge of Before and After?
This hardy group was not the Hebrews who left Egypt. That generation was dead. These Israelites were wanderers, familiar with the temporariness of tents, not the stability of stone-walled houses in their new homeland.
They had no memory of a static civilization who stayed in one place and trained grapevines and tilled fields. These travelers had no familiar landmarks to prepare them for life after arriving.
And ahead were battles to fight and cities to siege. All they knew was a vague hope of a beautiful homeland, years of desert behind, and war ahead.
How would God prepare them for the unknown?
Moses read God’s law to the people and exhorted them with the blessings of obeying God and the consequences of forsaking Him. Then He concluded with these words:
“I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live; that you may love the LORD your God, that you may obey His voice, and that you may cling to Him, for He is your life and the length of your days; and that you may dwell in the land which the LORD swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give them.”
Deuteronomy 30:19-20 NKJV as spoken by Moses
God offered the people not a thousand war plans, but four commands:
- Choose life
- Love the Lord your God
- Obey His voice
- Cling to Him
Why only four commands? Perhaps letting them in on His war plans would’ve been more comforting. The next verse tells us why: Because He is your life and the length of your days. He is your life. Not the land, not the plans, not the details. God is your life and your goal.
The Israelites ultimately cared about being prosperous and safe in their new homeland, just as I ultimately care that Luke will have a prosperous and safe future. Did the details really matter?
Carried before us, these commands are a shield of protection, a blanket of comfort, and a well of living water. God tells us what we need to know. Our job is to trust Him as He leads in victory over the details.
At the cusp of the new, we often feel overwhelmed by the unknown. Sometimes it seems like I’ll have to siege a thousand cities before our family can settle down.
But just as the Israelites didn’t win cities with soldiers but by the sovereign power of God, I can’t conquer the questions of my son’s future through my own power.
Instead, I choose what matters. I choose life. I choose to teach Luke to love God, to obey Him, and to hold on tight to His heavenly Father. Why? Because God will be my son’s life and length of days. God goes before us, so we can trust Him with our After.
Under His banner of love, the details don’t seem so scary. So choose life.
