That’s All Right

O Lord, you will ordain peace for us; you have done for us all our works. – Isaiah 26:12

When Elvis Presley died some 35 years ago, the local pop station played one particular song, “My Way”, over and over in every cycle.  That was the station they played in the office where I worked.  I begged them to change it or just turn the stupid thing off.  I never cared for the song all that much anyway, but at least the definitive Sinatra version had some grit, edge, and truth.  Elvis was just singing.  Elvis was about having fun, and as long as he was having fun, he was entertaining.  When he started taking himself too seriously, even his body rebelled. 

Presley was, as my pastor liked to point out when he put on the Christmas album, “an Assembly of God boy”.  Elvis never won a Grammy for any of his Rock’n’ Roll or Pop work, but he did win three for Gospel.  The reason for that oddity is probably a function of the fact that the first Grammy was awarded in 1959 -- after the ground-breaking records Elvis put out in 1956 through 1958.  A “my way” attitude might have made sense before Elvis headed off to serve his country in Germany.  As he told the receptionist at Sun, “I don’t sound like nobody.”  By the time he became the corpulent caped crooner of Las Vegas, he was a follower of trends and fashions, a hollow image, which is how his over-produced, over-done cover of “My Way” sounds.

The truth is that none of us do things our way -- not Frank Sinatra, not Elvis Presley, not the gold-grilled rappers or the tailor-made politicians.  We are free to make choices, but we are not free to choose the consequences, and those results are the things that can cut the ruts we follow and fence in our future.  There is no peace in “my way”, unless one is able to be at peace with bondage and confinement.  Even that resignation is a kind of repentance, at least an acknowledgement that we have missed God’s will.  Hebrews 12:17 tells us about Esau, For you know that afterward, when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no chance to repent, though he sought it with tears.  Esau also believed he could do things his way.  God had a plan for the seed of Abraham, a plan that would need to run its course for a couple of thousand years to reach a bloody Roman cross on a little knoll outside Jerusalem.  Esau rejected his part in that plan.  He was a man of the wild places -- independent, capable, resourceful, even admirable.  He was Isaac’s favorite.  Since Esau held the will of God in disdain, God chose Jacob, we might say, by default.  Thus Paul writes in Romans 9:10-13 -- And not only so, but also when Rebecca had conceived children by one man, our forefather Isaac, though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad—in order that God's purpose of election might continue, not because of works but because of his call—she was told, “The older will serve the younger.”  As it is written, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.”

The only real peace we will ever find is in that which God has ordained.  When Isaiah says God has “done for us all our works”, it means that He has created us for a path and the path for us, works for us to do and us to do those works.  We are made for a destiny and the destiny is made for us.   Despite what we read of Esau, I think there is always an open path of repentance if we have gone our way.  Esau did not weep because he had missed God’s will, but because he had lost his inheritance.  He could still have found peace by seeking his true destiny in the will of God. 

And there lies our paradox.  By taking the path that God has ordained for us, we become our true selves.  By surrendering to His will, we discover that our own will is being done, and we find our true purpose in life.  There is no better, more satisfying way to live than to know that we are doing exactly what we are meant to do.  What we have, where we live, who we know – none of these things matter when we wake one day to find that all those scattered pieces of the puzzle are starting to take shape and we can see our place and ourselves in it.  His way is my way, and that's all right.