Charlie Brown, my kind of guy

I was reading something the other day and they had a Peanuts cartoon in it where Lucy, Linus and Charlie Brown are outside laying on the side of a hill looking up at the clouds.  It was beautiful day with amazing clouds and Lucy asked the boys, “What shapes do you see as you are looking at the clouds?” Well, Linus is the first to speak and he says, “That one over there is like the Mona Lisa, and that one reminds me of the famous statue of David.  Over here it is like the ceiling in the Sistine Chapel and on and on.” Then it got quiet…..Lucy finally asks, “what do you see Charlie Brown?”  He pauses and then quietly says, “I see a doggie and that one looks like a tree and….that one looks like a leaf.”  I love Charlie Brown…..I may be Charlie Brown, short, bald…hmmm

Anyway I can so relate to this story as a guy who is called to lead but usually just sees the simple things and not the huge, grandiose images others, like Linus, see and I have come to realize I am OK with that.  The temptation in this can be to begin to make things up and then you have to go back and ask God to back you up, instead of being faithful with what you know He has shown you to do.  Now I am not saying at all that I am right and other people with unbelievable vision are making it up, I am just not wired that way and they are not wired the way I am.  In my wiring pattern from God I operate more from an intuitive process that allows me to see just a short way out front of myself.  Doesn’t mean God is only going to do small, insignificant things through me it just means He knows if He showed me the whole thing I would probably run in the other direction and then get swallowed by a whale and then….well you know the story. 

I love Jeremiah 29:11 where God tells His people, “I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”   He says “I know the plans I have” and then He follows up with these words; “Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.”    As I thought on this it came to me I had been reading this wrong or with a wrong motivation.  I had kind of thought that as God worked out His plan for me I would then seek Him and find Him.  What I think God is doing is He is saying “I know the plans I have for you and if you want to know those plans you will have to come and pray and seek me with all your heart, then you will find me and as you find me you will find the plan I have for you, a plan to bless and not harm.  To give you hope and a future…..”

He is not dangling it out there like a carrot but He is reminding His people that He is their hope and their future, it is in Him…and He is to be sought after and loved.  I think it is the same today…don’t you?  So we may not all be like Linus with tons of creativity and imagination….but we can seek after the one Who holds creativity in His hands for us…I can go for that.

Bill