During one of my TikTok scrolls, a video came across my feed of a man in all yellow running onto a baseball tarp. It was pouring rain; clearly the kind of situation few people would run toward. I watched as he helped many others pull the tarp to cover the field. It is a procedure that happens all the time in baseball. Someone has to pull the tarp when it rains.
But that someone (to my knowledge) never is an owner of the baseball organizations waiting to play. If you’re familiar with Banana Ball, then you probably already know who the man in yellow was. It was Jesse Cole, the creator of Banana Ball, who famously wears a yellow tux and is the owner of the teams that form this unique league.
Savannah Green
Cole has enough staff, as evidenced in the TikTok, to take care of pulling a tarp in the pouring rain. Yet, the man in yellow ran to help anyway.
And of course, when you are dressed in bright yellow in the middle of a downpour, you stand out. You stand out in the same way a friend’s contagious laugh can brighten a difficult day, or like the first sip of coffee when you are still groggy with sleep.
You stand out like joy in the midst of trials, disappointments and waiting.
For a while now, I have felt stuck in what Tish Harrison Warren in her new book What Grows in Weary Lands calls “a quiet crisis” and sense of being “disoriented.” It is not a personal life-altering traumatic event or a desire to abandon my faith. It is not even depression. But it is a type of lingering exhaustion and piercing confusion for what seems like either a never-ending desert or a relentless hurricane — or somehow both.
At times, it is an unavoidable numbing upon hearing of another major division within the church. At other times, it is a wave of bitterness when I do not understand how others can seem to lack so much empathy.
Another war. Headlines of Jesus being used, once again, for a political agenda. Power grabs and exploitation. Gas prices. Mass shooting, mass shooting, mass shooting. A chronic illness you cannot heal. Friendships that aren’t really friendships anymore. Growing up. Losing another grandparent.
Jesse Cole
I will not attempt to explain why any of it happens. I am still working through my anger with it all.
However, despite the anger and inability to understand, I have realized the phrase “God has a plan” is the most applicable piece of advice I have heard. But not in the vague, cliché sense of the phrase Christians often throw around.
I recently came across another TikTok where a creator named Amity Grace expressed her frustration with “hearing other Christians, in the face of injustice, in the face of great tragedy” use the throwaway line “God has a plan,” as if we are to sit back and wait for some grand plan to unfold. In the middle of my crisis of disorientation, exhausted beyond words, I nodded in agreement and almost exited out of the video, anticipating the point to be made would be to pray more. I already tried that.
But faster than my thumb could swipe up, the creator looked at the camera and said, “Yeah, God does have a plan, actually. And the plan is you.”
I blinked. Well, of course. It really is just that. How had I not thought of it? God does have a plan, and the plan is us, his people. Or, as the TikTok creator continued to express over and over (with intentional hand motions to emphasize it): “You’re the plan. You’re the plan.”
“In tragedy, difficulty, sadness, disorientation, anger, whatever the crisis, you’re the plan.”
You’re the plan. In tragedy, difficulty, sadness, disorientation, anger, whatever the crisis, you’re the plan. For joy to be known and shared, you’re the plan. When God sent his Spirit to dwell in you, you became the plan. To be sure, practicing joy during intense moments of life should not ignore the intense moments themselves. In fact, it should acknowledge both the pain and the willingness to take part in “being the plan.” It is a posture of “both/and.”
Because joy is running into the rain, into the hardships and unfathomable seasons of life, and choosing to help others pull a baseball tarp. Joy is having doubts and questions about your faith but still choosing to pray for a relative to a God who feels distant. Joy is feeling lost and uncertain about your future while showing up for friends’ birthdays, wedding showers and new babies. Joy is bearing the heaviness of corruption within the church and giving to organizations that help immigrants and displaced people.
Joy is, even in the smallest of ways, living out your role in the plan. It may not necessarily mean you need to go out and buy a yellow tux (but maybe pink is allowed?). But it does mean the coffee you bought for your coworker, the door you held open and the “How are you?” text are all part of God’s mysterious yet beautiful plan to use you for others to experience God’s joy.
To be honest, I still feel disoriented. That feeling has not gone away. And if you live in the same world as me, you most likely feel the same way. I have leaned more into sharing joy, but the disorientation remains.
But maybe that’s how we are meant to exist, at least for now, because the sun can still shine when it rains.
Savannah Green serves in theological higher education and enjoys researching and writing on the Gospels, Acts and practical theology. She earned a master of divinity degree from George W. Truett Theological Seminary at Baylor University.