The more you pay for advice the more likely you are to follow it. If you ask a friend’s opinion you can take it or leave it. If you employ a lawyer for their legal expertise you will probably listen to what he or she tells you to do. If you ask God for guidance then doing what He says is non-optional. Praying ‘you’re will be done’ costs everything – total abandonment to what He wills, when He wills, and how He wills.

Making plans for the future seems more difficult than usual. As individuals, as a University and as a nation, our decisions might well be overruled by circumstances beyond our control. But it’s not ultimately coronavirus that we are subject to. Proverbs 16:9 reads, ‘The human mind plans the way, but the LORD directs the steps.’ We are free to make decisions and our future is determined. No one forces our plans and God fixes the result. Christians are not fatalists: we try to make responsible decisions. Christians do not suppose the future is whatever we make it: we entrust ourselves to God’s good and perfect will.

When we ask for God’s guidance we often want a ‘yes or no’ answer or to ‘have a sense of peace’ about a decision. In reality He guides by telling us how to become the kind of people who are guided. We can be sure of what He has already said, and if we allow Scripture to shape and inform our experience then we become wise. Jesus had no ‘sense of peace’ in Gethsemane but abandoned himself to God’s will as events unfolded. That guidance cost him everything, but it was worth it.

We don’t know what the future holds but we have everything we need to make wise decisions. And having spent all we have, we wait to see where God guides.

The Revd Dr Rob Wainwright
Oriel College