Let it Be
Jerusalem
Dread.
The word sends a chill up my spine. It is a self fulfilling word, one that brings with it fearful anticipation of something terrible. And what makes it worse is when one feels the impending event or circumstance is unavoidable.
In today's reading, Paul's friends are filled with dread. They are given a vision from God of what is to come when he returns to Jerusalem and they want him to change his plans.
Don't go, they tell him, but he doesn't listen.
Since he would not be persuaded, we remained silent except to say, 'The Lord's will be done.'- Acts 21:14
Is it God's will if God warns us of danger and then we choose to enter into it anyway?
Paul believed it was, and his friends could not change his mind.
How frustrated they must have felt. But even more than that, they had to be angry with him for ignoring the warning from God!
If Paul was also receiving messages from God, which he most likely was, what was God telling him?
When the people wept, Paul told them he knew he was going to be bound and imprisoned in Jerusalem, which is what the Holy Spirit showed them, but he also told them something else, something more dreadful.
He knew they would kill him, and this was something he knew he had to do.
So, which was God's will, that Paul would avoid death or that he would endure the suffering?
How would we feel if someone we love is determined to do what we know will lead to harm? If we believe God is giving us a premonition of something horrible, wouldn't we believe that God wants us to intervene?
Paul's friends leave it in God's hands.
Can we do the same?
I don't know if I can. If someone close to me is about to do something dangerous, I will do all I can to keep it from taking place. Is that wrong?
I feel for Paul's friends. They had to be heartbroken and terrified for him. They must have thought that he had reverted to his zealous ways, throwing himself headlong into the thick of it, when he could easily avoid the danger.
Maybe it was the will of God that he suffer and die. Like Paul's friends, I have trouble understanding that, so I have to do what they did and offer it up to Him.
In the end, they had no choice but to let it be.