What if things had happened differently?

Posted

Around 30 years ago, I started reading alternate history. It is also called speculative fiction. A sub category, I guess, would be dystopian fiction, which usually imagines a future where everything goes wrong, we have no electricity, cars and planes may not work, and so on. Alternate history attempts to answer the question, what if? What if the South won the Civil War? What if Germany won World War I, or World War II?
What would happen then? And so the story goes.
We have just celebrated Easter and the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Son of God and the Lord of all there is. This is the most earth-shattering and world-changing event of all of human history. It is the most powerful change that human existence could ever have.
I was thinking about some “what if” moments that arise since the Resurrection.
What if the disciples had kept their mouths shut?
Instead of boldly proclaiming the good news that Jesus is alive, what if they had spent the rest of their lives cowering in fear and pretending that Jesus was still dead in the tomb? What then? Where would we be today? What if, three centuries later, Constantine, emperor of the Roman Empire, had not had his moment of revelation where he saw the cross in the sky, heard the voice of God, and was converted? What if the church had continued to face persecution from the Roman Empire and others? Where would we be today?
Speaking as a Protestant pastor, what if Martin Luther had not taken his stand against the abuses taken place in the Roman Catholic Church in 1519? What if he had kept his head down, his doubts to himself, and quietly finished out his career as a monk? What then?
What would the church universal look like today? What would all of the churches we are part of look like? Would they even exist? Speaking as a Methodist pastor, what if John Wesley had not responded to the Holy Spirit of God when his heart was strangely warmed in 1738?

What if he had continued his teaching and preaching in the Church of England and never became the catalyst God used to raise up the people called Methodist? Where would I be today? In what church would I serve the God who is so important to my very existence?
Speaking on the personal level, where would I be if I had not been converted in my teen years?
What if I had rejected the invitation of God, ignored the wise counsel of pastors and other Christians in my life, rejected my family upbringing in church, and said no to God? What if I had refused to serve him?
What if I had ignored the Holy Spirit when God spoke to me and invited me into a deeper walk with him where I surrendered all of my fears and pain of the past, the questions of the present, and the unknown hopes and dreams of the future?
What if I had resisted when God asked me to live a holy life with a heart made purely and totally in love with him? What then? What would my life be like today? Where would I be? What would I be doing? What if I ran away from God’s call into the ministry? What if I had told him that was not the life for me? What then? What would my life look like?
Let me ask a “what if” for all of us. What if, at every stage in our lives, every moment of decision, every opportunity that was presented to us, we said yes to God? What if we never held anything back from him?
What if we were completely committed to eternal values and eternal issues and eternal consequences instead of, all too often, more committed to values that contradict eternity, more supportive of issues that do not reflect God’s teachings, and more concerned about activities and situations and involvements that have no consequence at all for eternity?
What if we lived lives that were centered on God and his purposes and not our own agendas and desires? What would life look like then? Friends, I would look to take the plunge and be the answer to God’s “what if”. Would you?
Kevin Barron is the pastor of Perryville and Crossroads United Methodist Churches. he can be reached by phone at 573-547-5200 or via email at kdbarron@gmail.com.