A different kind of bucket list

I spent some time with a friend recently and we began talking about choices we had each made, choices that had a significant impact on our lives and the lives of our families. It wasn’t long until I discovered what he was really doing. He was trying to continue to feel good about the direction of his life, a direction that was the result of the choice he had made.

The more I listened to him talk, the better I came to understand his world view in relation to his faith. (It was a conversation that had been long in coming.) What struck me as most profound was that my friend, a very bright and capable older professional in the field of business management, had a very simple understanding of God and choice. Indeed, it was an understanding that he had been taught as a child and it had never grown, developed or matured beyond that early childhood lesson.

My friend wanted me to answer for God that he had made the right choice several years ago when he relocated his family to pursue a job opportunity here in the Midstate area. He wanted me to ratify in retrospect his choice by also affirming that had he stayed put, it would have been the wrong choice. He firmly believed that there was one right choice and one wrong choice. That meant there was only one Godly choice, the right one and the other, well that was grounded in evil.

Rather than answer him immediately, I asked him to do something for me. I asked him to imagine a bucket filled with pieces of paper on which he had listed all the places in the world he wanted to visit. He grinned and easily did do so without hesitation. Then I asked him to imagine another bucket filled with pieces of paper on which he listed all his worst nightmares. Again, but this time with some in trepidation, he did so.

Then I asked him to pull out one and only one piece of paper. He wanted to know from which bucket. I told him “that” was his big choice of faithfulness, from which bucket he would choose.

Somewhere, way back in his childhood, my friend got the belief that there was only one Godly choice as we face decisions in our lives. He was never told that often God has a bucket full of faithful choices before us and that God will gladly walk with us down any of the trails we pick from that bucket.   

My friend looked at me with a sly grin touched with a tad of remorse and said, “I am wasting time I could be investing in those I love by worrying about which paper I picked from the ‘good bucket’, aren’t I?”

“What do you think?” I responded.

Just another thought from the shallows . . . 

Dr. Jeff Wilson grew up in Nashville, has ties to both UT and Vandy, and has served as senior pastor at numerous churches throughout the South and in Texas. He and his family now call Brentwood home where they own a business. He also serves on the Brentwood United Methodist Church staff. Click here to read his recent columns.