Back to the future

A few days ago I posted the following status on Facebook:

Twenty years ago I'd just finished my A levels and was planning for my year out doing youth work at West Town Baptist Church on Hayling Island. Ten years ago I'd just qualified as a youth worker and was exploring the possibility of working at Ascension Church. Today I'm off to Bromley for a fortnight's 'holiday' before preparing in earnest to start a Masters in Christian Leadership at St Mellitus North West in the autumn. It's a journey that I suspect would have baffled my eighteen-year-old self (as it still regularly baffles me) but as, my year out pastors promised me, it's been character-building! Who knows what the next twenty years might holds...?

I'd barely pressed send when I realised that the trajectory I'd outlined - youth work in my year out, qualifying as a youth worker, starting on a Masters in Christian Leadership - was actually not remotely baffling. In fact, it's a trajectory that makes complete sense.

So let me start by apologising for posting something so ridiculous. I've given myself a talking to and it won't happen again.

However.

I think it is fair to say that the three markers I picked mask the confused and chaotic collection of experiences of the last twenty years, and yet I wonder whether they are significant precisely because they demonstrate something of the truth that 'in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.' (Romans 8:28) There have been numerous times over those twenty years when I've wondered what on earth was going on and yet the reality is that there's very little that I've gone through that doesn't make some degree of sense when I look back with benefit of hindsight.

I do feel like I'm poised at the start of something new and significant (although the very vocal cynic in me likes to pop up and remind me that I've felt like this before and have come away disappointed). If I've learnt anything since the balmy summer of 1994 it's that it's impossible to predict how the next couple of years will pan out, that there will appear to be triumphs and disasters (thanks, Mr Kipling. Not that one. The other one.), that there'll be highs and lows and I'll almost certainly end up in a place that's very different to the one I might imagine myself in as I think about the future. But whatever happens, it'll all count and looking back from the vantage point of 2034 I'd like to think it'll all make sense.