A friend told me the other day, “Canceled plans are like crack for millennials.” I hadn’t heard that before, maybe because I lean Gen-X, but he’s a millennial, so it must be true!?! In his old stand-up set “New In Town,” Comedian John Mulaney thanks his audience for actually showing up to see him. He remarks how:
It’s really easy not to go to things. It is so much easier not to do things than to do them, that you would do anything is totally remarkable. Percentage-wise, it is 100% easier not to do things than to do them. And so much fun not to do them, especially when you are supposed to do them. In terms of, like, instant relief, canceling plans is like heroin. It is an amazing feeling. Such instant joy.
Jokes aside, it’s hard not to feel a nugget of truth there.
Usually, conversations around people ditching plans at the last minute orbit around why we cancel them (cue talks about introversion and social media). But I’m far more interested in the kind of plans that are canceled for us, by extenuating circumstances, with a tinge of a surprise to them. Why do those kinds of things often feel so refreshing, whatever generation we’re a part of?
An internet meteorologist I follow on Twitter helped shed light on this for me. He posted a forecast for rain, followed with: “I love a rainy morning sometimes. No pressure to save the world today. Just a good day to be lazy after a busy week.” Whether it be snow days or an afternoon thunderstorm, unforeseen weather events lower expectations on us. They take the pressure off.
I used to spend a lot of time on the golf course (did I mention I’m a Gen-Xer?). And as much as I enjoyed smacking a 42.67mm dimpled sphere around God’s green earth, getting rained out would come with a sigh of relief — especially at a tournament. The rain would fall from heaven and wash away any pressure to perform. The stress of competition could wait for another day. “Until then,” the rain said, “go home and rest.”
The meteorologist’s tweet probably didn’t mean to dip its toe into the theological, but it reminded me of when Jesus, not long before his arrest, predicted his disciples’ flight and abandonment, saying, “The hour is coming when you will be scattered, each to his own home, and will leave me alone.” Perhaps it was the threat of arrest and death, but there’s something about the sufferings of Jesus that send people to their homes, literally and figuratively, like a sudden crack of loud thunder (Lk 12:54-56, Jn 19:27).
Every step that Jesus took toward Calvary made it all the clearer that the saving the world business was to be accomplished solely by himself. Single-handedly. Hanging from that instrument of torture, his life slowly slipping away, the day grew abnormally dark. At his final breath, the earth shook. A thunderstorm of divine judgment descended upon Jerusalem, and everyone dropped what they were doing and headed for the hills. The cross was the loudest demonstration ever of “You don’t have to save the world today; Jesus already has.” It was the great plan-canceler of history, for all ages and generations. It interrupts our efforts at saving ourselves and sends us to our homes — not onto great pilgrimages or perilous adventures, but to rest.
When it comes to salvation, it’s 100% better not to work for it than to work for it. And through Jesus, the one who makes it rain on both the righteous and the unrighteous, this is precisely the message the gospel brings to bear: the surprise rainstorm of the gruesome death of the Son of God gives shelter to the good and the bad alike, for it’s by his grace we’re saved, not by our works.
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Really good Chris. Thank you!