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One of the things that struck me is that King wasn't King all along. He became who he was along the way. For example, King did not set out to be the leader of a movement. He "happened" to be pastoring in Montgomery at the tender age of 25 when Rosa Parks decided not to sit in the back of the bus. So able was he as spokesman during the subsequent protests that he was tapped for other leadership roles. Soon he was on a national stage, even while his civil rights views were still forming. When he was gunned down fourteen years later, he was a very different man - the Martin Luther King, Jr., who personified the civil rights movement, and whose memory we honor. While King had certain innate gifts, had he not been where he was, when he was, and doing what he was, he would not have become the man he was. He would have retired as a little-known pastor or professor, never having become the man he became by the age of 39.
None of us picks the issues of our day. Nor would any of us have chosen to be embroiled in the controversies that rock the Presbyterian Church these days. We long for a season of peace, unity, and purity, so that we can get on with our pastoring, missions, and so on. And yet none of us would be who we are without these struggles. This is not to say that controversy is good. Talk about a diversion of time and money! It is simply to reaffirm with Scripture that what the Evil One intends for ill, God uses for good.
Might we venture to identify some of the good God has worked in us over these years of controversy? For one thing he has confronted us with our homophobia (in the original sense of the word). He has also enabled us to acknowledge how pervasive sexual brokenness and sin are in the whole of the church. He has taught us forbearance, both with fellow strugglers and theological foes. He has taught us much about balancing "wise as serpents" with "innocent as doves" in the political expressions of church life. We are now better at speaking the truth in love than we once were. And, with our struggles out there for all the world to see, we have had the opportunity to learn some humility. The Presbyterian Church is not nearly so theologically sophisticated, nor so "decent and ordered" as we like to imagine. I will not presume to speak specifically for our opponents in these debates, but I trust that God has used the controversies in their lives as well.
Part of what it means to trust the Lord is to receive the gifts he brings, and not to rue the gifts he does not bring. The gifts he has brought in this season of discontent have afforded us many opportunities to grow up in Christ.
I do not know what the Lord has in store for the Presbyterian Church. But I believe he has been and is at work in us--and not just in the happy spots. He really does work everything to the good. And as he does, he makes of us what we were not.