When I worked and studied at Wheaton College, I got sick to death of people talking about being “intentional.” It was “intentionality” this and “on purpose” that. But the further away my life moves from that season, the more I hear sense and beauty in the song that broken record played. I’ve got a second child about to enter this world and my son, Silas, is already beginning to mimic me when I yell at distracted drivers who perform the same idiotic maneuvers I am prone to making. On some levels, his attention to my life petrifies me, I kid you not. I don’t want to have to think about everything I say and do, but I have no choice do I? My life is writing on his in much the same way I am now pecking out letters to form words which are constituting a transfer of my ideas into your consciousness.
I am a pastor. One of those people everyone expects to be an example of polished piety. I had lunch with a guy last week who jokingly said he needs a pastor who’s a better person than him so that God hears my prayers for him when he offers only unworthy ones, and he’s not sure if I’ll do. Then the conversation shifted to nihilism (That’s another post. I’ll get to it.). So I feel the burden of intentionality, not just because I’m a pastor, but because there are people buzzing around my life like the Japanese Beetles that are swarming my shrubberies right now. I’m not polished. Or pious. But I feel better about that when I know I’m being myself on purpose. I’m so busy and it’s a challenge to stop, zoom out, ask “why,” etc. I don’t feel better about it because I’ve exercised discipline and therefore been more responsible. I feel better because I sense the presence of God in the absence of my impulsiveness. I think I’ve discovered that intentionality is at the core of redemptive history. God wastes no word or action. The layers and layers of meaning in Scripture that all point toward Jesus coming back tattooed and on his horse are ”on purpose” to enlighten our hearts when they bog down in the mud of religious activity and hearing the same stuff all the time but rarely feeling anything consequential as a result of it.
So I guess Colossians 3:23 is asking us to consider our ways in light of the fact that in the end they are “unto God” and not men, rooting their value in eternity. They are deliberate matters of the heart, not reactions. I don’t know about you, but that gives me pause. If God had simply reacted to the events of his creation, we wouldn’t simply be fallen. We would already have met our sudden stop.
