When Things Don't Go to Plan

Many years ago, when I was 20 years old, I took my second short-term trip to Haiti. After arriving in the country, the group traveled the rough and rugged journey by road to the northwest where eight of us were pulled from the group to make our way across the sea to the island of Tortuga. There really isn’t one part of this adventure that was ordinary, beginning with the vocal turkey that sat below my seat for many miles over dusty trails, or the crude vessel we boarded for our sail to a remote people, or the sheer mountain we climbed to participate in worship with Christians who had been waiting for a long, long time for someone to find them and bring encouragement. One of the most memorable aspects of the experience, however, turned out to be the matter of securing water while on the island. 

We were surrounded by the sea and encamped in a thatched roof hut on the beach, so fresh water was somewhere up in the mountains. Shortly after our arrival, a member of the team grabbed a couple of our large buckets and, with the help of the locals, disappeared into the palms and thickets on the mountainside. Several hours later, we started asking each other, “Where’s Jim?” We were about to go in search of him when he appeared in the frame of the hut’s doorway, stripped down to his shorts, sweating profusely, and panting as he set down the less-than-half-full buckets. We soon learned fetching water was going to be a large portion of our daily work. 

The next morning, we woke up to a very large crowd amassed outside of our hut, waiting to hear and see what we foreigners had to offer them. The crowd far exceeded the supplies we’d brought to aid in sharing the gospel, but we were eager. There was teaching and preaching, and there were Bible lessons, but above all, we forged relationships. After several days sharing our lives with these very receptive islanders, a few of us who had yet to fetch water wanted to take our turn. Out we came from the hut with our buckets, three ladies and one man, ready to head into the mountains. Quickly, several of the children we'd spent many hours with over recent days scampered up to us and, without an interpreter, speaking in their own language and using hand motions, indicated they would take us to get the water. Instead of heading to the path the guys had been using, they ran with our buckets to two little row boats pulled ashore along the sea. They threw all our buckets into the boats, jumped in, grabbed the oars, and began flagging at us vigorously to climb aboard. While none of this was making sense to us, it was apparent they were very confident, so we trusted and complied. We’d grown to love each other, after all. 

It wasn’t long before our little captain, who looked to be about seven years old, while directing both boats, was rowing us into the Caribbean channel farther and farther away from the shore. We were taking on an ocean in row boats with busy little boys moving all about us while one with an old tin can vigilantly scooped out water that was continuously pooling in the boat’s floor. This was not going to plan. We four adults in two boats were now the ones attempting to cross language barriers with animated gestures demanding dry land. The children we’d been teaching and playing with since arriving at Tortuga were now in charge. What had we done? Randomly the children stopped rowing, stripped off all their clothes and jumped in the ocean for a swim. As my reality was sinking in that we were asea in non-seaworthy vessels in the hands of half a dozen naked five-year-olds, I absorbed the shock then grabbed the tin can and started bailing. Eventually, the boys climbed back into the boats, redressed, and began to row us back toward the island, though this time landing just around the bend of the shoreline from where the hut was that we had started from. We four Americans were assessing among ourselves the hike we had to add to the water fetching in order to get back around the beach to our hut where the trail began that led to the water that took several hours to fetch, roundtrip.  

Once again, the children grabbed up our water buckets and instead of heading back toward our hut, ran toward the mountainside from this side of the island, and once again, we followed. This led to a trail that, as it turned out, was more direct to the spring and much less grueling than the path that our team had been taking during the days prior. Not that we would have known, but the trail that had been being used was a donkey path whereas the trail the children took us to, albeit after a spontaneous ocean swim, was the wiser, better option. Sometimes, when things don’t go to plan, you need to just listen and learn and love. 

In recent days as I’ve studied Matthew 22-24, I have felt more deeply impacted by a few comments Jesus made than ever before. I referenced in my writings before the burden I feel over the divide that we are experiencing in the Church family that stems from the culture wars of our day. Too often, there are harsh conclusions made about those on the other side of the debate without the benefit of anyone offering any insight on where the water is, so to speak. It’s as if there is a genuine belief the other side must be evil. The intolerance of those who are supposed to be family is, to be frank, deadly. 

Jesus saw this in the manner the Pharisees were treating the Jewish people who were attempting to follow God’s law. They had become so ensconced in their own corrupted paradigms, they shamelessly degraded those under the law while themselves, violating what Jesus considered most important. This is hypocrisy. In Matthew 23:33, Jesus said to the Pharisees, “You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell?” (NIV used throughout). The Pharisees were the experts on the law of Moses, the guide to knowing God, to obedience, and understanding how to honor Him. But there were a few things that did not go to plan. Jesus neither fit the idea of what they expected for a Messiah, nor was His message compatible with their agenda. They judged quickly and failed to listen and learn. By the time experts on the law of Moses had this confrontation with Jesus, they had completely pirated it. They were unabashedly using the law and their position for extortion and power. When Jesus essentially tells them they’re going to hell, we as readers really need to try and place ourselves in the temple area and imagine the gravity of this scene unfolding. Jewish society is witnessing Jesus telling their teachers they are condemned hypocrites because the Pharisees had taken the Truth and weaponized it for their own purposes instead of mobilized it as a means of adhering others to a God who loved and longed for them. If you want to imagine a parallel to how this hits home among the body of the Church today, let’s keep in mind our goals and aspirations over living in a nation that is righteous is not meant to be in the hands of the government but the result of the work of the Church, boots on the ground, heart to heart. 

Jesus also told the Pharisees, “You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when you have succeeded, you make them twice as much a child of hell as you are” (Matthew 23:15). We were once taught about drug lords throughout Central and South America manufacturing cocaine, living in heavily guarded estates, rich from the evil of trafficking narcotics. In a September 2024 brief from the Council on Foreign Relations, the following was written about the status of things today. “Small chemical manufacturers in China have become shadow suppliers fueling clandestine labs in Mexico and beyond, churning out illicit fentanyl and fentanyl-related substances that are contributing to the global drug trade and the U.S. opioid epidemic.” Also stated in the brief, “Today, international drug cartels are increasingly turning to specialized Chinese criminal gangs for swift, cheap, and secure money laundering services” (https://www.cfr.org/expert-brief/what-chinas-role-combating-illegal-fentanyl-trade). We can also add to that human trafficking because the two work together so readily. This is what corruption looks like generationally. It expands and gets uglier, as Jesus pointed out to the Pharisees. 

Jesus also told the Pharisees, “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill, and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy, and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former” (Matthew 23:23). I have taken the time to explore these encounters with the Pharisees because the conflict Jesus was addressing was not between believers versus non-believers but from within Yahweh’s chosen. The severity of the Pharisees beating up their constituency with their inflated interpretation of the law of God led to a total detachment from God. Their agenda became their god and subsequently, they proselytized more into their corrupted thinking. When we become so rigid in our knowledge of law that we fail to offer a path to the water, no one is listening or learning or loving because we aren’t creating the opportunity for it. This could not have been the plan meant for the family of God. 

Somewhere to this day are little children scampering about on the island of Tortuga who need the Church to be strong, the family of God to be steadfast, to look and feel like both truth and love. In fact, there are those who cross our paths every day who need the same thing. When the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Herodians all contemplated ways to trip Him up, Jesus answered so knowledgeably, they dared not ask any more questions, as the Bible describes. He not only had the answers, He was the answer. This is entirely sufficient. He has already won. If we become so enrapt in accusing a fellow believer of failing to emulate the law of God because of assumptions that invariably accompany personal political passions or culture war debates, we need to give pause. We may become that which we find so objectionable, and I don’t think that was the plan.