Over Our Head

I’ve already said this once, but it bears repeating.  We are in over our heads…and I’m not just talking about those of us who happen to be in the boys ranch business.  If you are alive and breathing, you are in over your head also.

I was recently reminded of this during a conversation with the director of another residential care facility here in Missouri.  As Jeremy and I talked with this gentleman on our second day as full time Whetstone employees, we were in equal parts inspired and overwhelmed.  It was difficult to process the amount of work and wisdom required to make something like this work.  The devil is indeed a roaming lion, seeking whom he may devour.  And he doesn’t devour things that are already dead.  He lets the vulture do that.  The lion devours the tender young that have a bright future in front of them.  Boys are irresistible.  Facilities like ours make an even juicier target, since he can potentially wipe out hundreds of boys into the future, with one fell swipe.

None of us can defeat him on our own.  To think we can is to invite disaster.  I don’t wish to sound pessimistic, because I’m really not, but we are just too weak, ignorant, stupid and selfish to offer any significant resistance on our own.  As parents, teachers, students, business owners, church leaders (and, let’s have some grace…members of congress) our scope is so extremely limited, that try as we may, no amount of planning can guarantee success or prevent failure.  We live in a fallen world, and none of us can escape it.

Does God work in, through and in spite of our fallen-ness?  Certainly.  Can we see him at work?  Sometimes.  Do we have to like how he works?  Nope.  If God wants Whetstone Boys Ranch to succeed, it will succeed.  If he has other plans…well then…he has other plans.

But for the time being, it is hard to decipher his prompting as anything other than directions that, as my dad would say, we cannot misunderstand.  We have doors, and windows, and garages, and houses thrown wide open.  And so we step forward in faith.

We won’t anticipate everything that we need to be successful, but with God’s help through your prayers, we will hopefully avoid the pits into which the devil would lead us.  Please pray that being in over our heads will make us even more dependent on the one who reigns above, beyond and way, way over all of our heads.