When It Makes No Sense

Until a few years ago I was what many may have considered to be the consummate conservative. I was conservative in my political views, in our investments, and in the way I dressed. I was conservative in my ambitions and in setting my goals in life. I was conservative in making life-altering choices. Looking back on it now, I realize that I was even conservative in my faith in God.

I don’t know that I ever made a conscious decision to be a conservative. I just was. Perhaps, like so many of us, I was just a product of my environment. My parents were conservative in most every way, just as were my grandparents. I gravitated towards their way of thinking because it was what I had become accustomed to, and because it felt comfortable. Perhaps, more than anything else, I was conservative because it was safe, and playing it safe greatly reduced my potential for failure, or at least that’s the way that I saw it.

Being conservative meant that every decision that I made in life had to make sense! There had to be a logical reason for everything that I did, regardless of the size or importance of the decision to be made and how it would affect our lives.

If we bought a new car, it was because it made sense to do so (and of course, we made the sensible choice). The same could be said for building a new home, or making business decisions, or deciding where to invest our hard-earned dollars. Everything had to make sense. You get what I’m saying, don’t you? Saying that I played it “close-to-the-vest” was an understatement.

Until…

It was five years ago last month that God started working in my life, calling on me to make decisions that made no sense at all…

It made no sense in August of 2005 for me to convince my wife Jackie that we should just “abandon” a profitable hair salon that we’d owned for sixteen years to open a new salon, with a new name, a new phone number, and a new team, thirteen miles away. (It also made no sense that during its first year our new business, Salon M², would grow more quickly than we could ever have imagined, surpassing any and all success we’d had in our old salon.)

It made no sense that in August of 2006, at the not-so-tender age of fifty-three, I would make the outlandish decision to get a cross tattooed on my arm, and then later that night to brazenly declare myself to be “soldier of Christ.”

It made no sense that three months later I would make a commitment to change who I was, what I was, and what I did in life by giving control of my life to God.

It made no sense that in January of 2007, during a business presentation for Redken (a global hair care company), I would openly talk about God and all that He had done in my life.

It made no sense that God became the center of my universe, or that I was consumed with knowing Him, loving Him, and serving Him.

It made no sense that a fifty-four year old man who had always run from the Bible would not only begin to read it, but would come to view it as being the living Word of the living God.

It made no sense that in October of 2008, The Seed of Hope would be launched with the intentions of taking the good news of God, and what He had done in my life around the world (I stopped counting when the number of countries topped thirty).

It made no sense that on March 9, 2009, I would walk into the Church of The Highlands, a Christian Non-Denominational church here in Birmingham, with Jackie, and never return to a church of which I had been a part of all my life.

It made no sense when, in August of 2009, I was Baptized again, not as a Catholic, or as a Baptist, or as a Methodist, but quite simply, as a Christian.

It made no sense that during that same month, Jackie and I would, after eight years as “empty-nesters”, open our home to a twenty-seven year old ministry student from North Carolina, and again this August to a young lady from Minnesota.

And finally, it made no sense for us to put a prayer room, The Seed of Hope room, in the middle of our hair salon a couple of months ago, but that’s exactly what we did.

None of the things that I just listed made sense to me at the time, and I’m fairly sure that they didn’t make sense to the people in my life, or to casual observers. But they made sense to God.

I always talk about God’s plans for us, and how His plans are much better than any we may devise for ourselves. My life is a classic example of this point. You see, for God to get me from Point A (where I was in 2005) to Point B (where I am today), I had to do all these things that, for the most part, defied logic, and well, made no sense.

I feel the need to mention something here…

I realize that for the past few weeks the posts have centered more on my struggles than on, let’s say, “lighter” subjects. Life has indeed been a challenge for Jackie and me the last couple of months, to be sure. But there’s one thing that I need to emphasize here…

I have never been happier, or more filled with God’s peace and love than I am today. What I’m trying to say here is that I wouldn’t change a thing, even if I had the opportunity. It’s that good. God is that good.

Perhaps…

God is calling you to do something that just doesn’t make sense at all. There may be no logic, or rhyme, or reason behind it, but you know that it’s there. And it won’t go away. Here’s the thing: if it has anything to do with Him, or His people, or His Kingdom, it doesn’t have to make sense to you. The important thing to remember is that it makes sense to Him, and that makes plenty of sense.

I want to leave you with a verse from Matthew 19. It’s short in length, but HUGE in what it implies. It’s not about whether we believe in God, but more about what we believe about God.

26Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”

Even when it makes no sense.

See you next week.