The heart of man plans his way, but the LORD establishes his steps. -- Proverbs 16:9
There is so much that we can do, and we ought to do what we
can. Sometimes, though, we run up
against our limits, both as individuals and as humanity it general. Sometimes our plans are thwarted and our
best, most diligent efforts come to naught.
It is almost a cliché anymore to “thank God for unanswered prayers”, but
that’s because so many of us so frequently have no idea what we need, let alone
what God has in mind for us.
As we said a few days ago, some of the stuff that comes at
us is meant to challenge, refine, and strengthen us. God doesn’t want us to quit but to
overcome. Other times, He does want us
to quit. He’s taking something away that
is hindering our development in His direction.
If God has burned a bridge, He may not want us to swim the river but to
take a different road.
I was never one to plan ahead much. My life has been, as far as I was concerned,
mostly just whatever was there to get done.
As haphazard as I am, I can see that something of a pattern and structure has emerged from what I thought was just random, scattered debris -- almost as if maybe there was a plan, and I kind
of stumbled into it.
The really weird part about it is that where I am is just
about where I would have said, thirty or forty years ago, that I wanted to be. However, I would never have imagined taking the
route I took to get here.
Suppose
you were abducted, blindfolded, and taken up in an airplane. After an hour or two, a parachute is strapped
to your back, the ripcord is placed in your hand, and you are shoved out the
door. Your chute opens successfully, you feel yourself floating down. You haven't managed to get your blindfold off yet, and you brace for an impact that never comes. Your chute hangs up in a
tree. You are uninjured. You get the blindfold off only to find that it is a moonless, overcast night. You have no idea where you are or even how much farther
it is to the ground, but you decide to cut the lines. You drop about six inches and start
walking. After three hours of
trudging aimless through the woods, you see a light and head toward. Suddenly things begin to seem oddly familiar,
and when you finally get to the source of the light, you find that it is coming
from your own kitchen window.
That’s pretty much the story of my life.
4 comments:
To paraphrase Bob, when we look back it all seems like a plot.
I like the idea of the possibility that at the end, somehow, one might find oneself returning Home. Not that there's anything wrong at all with where I am now - far from it, in fact - nor even that I have, at this point, any idea at all of what "Home" might look like. Rather, after all these nomadic years, there's just a sense that there is A Place...
Funny thing - last night, we returned home after a long visit west to see family and celebrate a wedding; at another home, one might say (we have quite a few of them, really, since herebelow they're found wherever we have left pieces of our hearts). Anyway, it's been ten days, and we've only lived here for a year, and I was surprised at how much I actually like the place we walked in to. Like seeing it with eyes made new.
I'm glad to hear you had a good trip.
Getting home is always a relief, no matter how much fun you had. One time, though, we were living in a trailer. My wife got herself invited with some other ladies to have dinner with the then-Governor's wife. At the Governor's Mansion. Upon returning from her evening out, she walked in the door of our trailer and said, "I can't believe I have to come back to this dump!"
Ha! Might be a dump...but it's our dump..
That Governor's a freeloader!
That's true. He had to move out a few years later.
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