David Letterman, Knowing God and Knowing God's Will

When we were in high school, neither my brother nor I like David Letterman. He was annoying. He stopped the show to do stupid things with his tie or to fix his eyebrows.

Then I went to college and hung out with some guys who really loved him. Watching the show with these guys helped me to 'get it.' My brother and I were both home over fall break of our freshmen year (he and I both graduated the same year from high school) and I told him: "We gotta' watch Letterman, I've figured him out."

So we sat down that night, and it wasn't too long before Dave was being Dave--he stopped half-way through some opening sketch to entertain himself. My brother, very annoyed, yelled at the t.v. "Dude, get on with the show!" But I answered, "No, dude, he IS the show!" The secret to enjoying David Letterman was understanding that it's his world, and we're just along for the ride for an hour.

Often when we're in a period of waiting or of making hard choices, we want God to just tell us stuff. We want him to reveal his plan, make our way clear, help us make a good decision. We want God to get on with the show.

But here's the deal: God is the show. He will not rush onto the next thing if slowing us down will help us to stop long enough to know him more fully. We want answers, God wants to make us holy in the process. It is those processes, not the final decisions themselves, that most often make us the people that God wants us to be. If we can establish processes of seeking after God, knowing his heart, and becoming more like him during the periods of transition in our lives, then we will be well on our way to having holy outcomes, the 'right' outcomes, that we so often (rightly) seek after.