I assumed that I would meet my future wife at Wheaton College. What better place to find a young Christian woman with common goals? I didn't. It was a year after graduation that I met Anne in Taiwan and again, a couple of days later, in Hong Kong, when and where I least expected to meet my life partner. There went my plans.

We got married the summer before my final year at Princeton Theological Seminary. Her parents assumed they had lost her to an eastern pastor. I, too, planned on a lifetime of ministry on the East Coast. After three years in Tulsa and six years in Key Biscayne, Florida, it appeared that we would spend at least 20 years at the First Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh. Then God abruptly confronted us with a call to St. Andrew's and literally bulldozed us out of that 200-plus-year-old cathedral church in the heart of a major eastern city and brought us here to Newport Beach, California, the last place I ever dreamed of serving. And here we are, 25 years later. There went my plans.

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We raised our daughters, Suzanne, Carla and Janet here in Newport Beach. Anne and I had all kinds of spoken and unspoken assumptions as to how our family life would play out when, suddenly, Suzanne was diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease her senior year at Princeton. Even then we assumed that she would battle through and live, as many do. But, 19 months later, she died. From that moment on, every assumption about how family life will play itself out simply evaporated. There went our plans.

I could give more illustrations from my life. And you could add to them from yours. I look back and realize that "Life is what happens to you while you are making other plans."

Frankly, that is not all bad, unless perchance you see it from the perspective of the fatalism of the non-believer for whom all life is a series of accidents and happenstances in which "Lady Luck" plays a prominent role. All these 63 years of experience I have had, combined with all these same years being immersed in reading the Bible and endeavoring to be a follower of Jesus Christ, I have discovered that you and I have a choice to make. It is a choice between "Life-PLUS" versus "Life-MINUS."

Jesus said, "'I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly'" (John 10:10b). He injects this powerful statement into the very midst of His description of himself, as a figure of speech, of the Good Shepherd. He describes those who follow Him as being sheep for whom He cares. They know His voice. He knows each of them by name. He leads them throughout the day through pleasant pastures and cool, fresh water. He protects them from marauding wild animals and from thieves who come to steal, kill, and destroy. By night, He sleeps across the entranceway to the sheep-fold, alert to the threatening sounds, providing a secure night of rest for His sheep. He claims to be not just a hireling, paid to watch over the sheep. He declares He is their owner. And, most significantly, on this day that we come to observe His life, death and resurrection in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, He declares, "'And I lay down my life for the sheep'" (John 10:15). It is within this context that Jesus emphatically declares to you and me, "'I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.'"