Fall… in line with God’s Will
The heart of man plans his way, but the LORD establishes his steps. Proverbs 16:9
What is your response when things don’t go as planned: physically, financially, emotionally, or even spiritually? Are you thrown off kilter, or do you roll with the punches? Do you immediately fall into a tailspin, or right the craft and keep pressing onward? I always liked to think I could stay steady in a storm, but I’m finding that I have a lot of work to do in that area.
This weekend, I made plans. Very few of them came to be, but looking back, the weekend was amazing and such a blessing!
The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord: and he delighteth in his way. Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down: for the Lord upholdeth him with his hand. Psalm 37:23-24
God wants good for us, and although we may suffer in certain times or seasons, His ultimate plan is for our good. Part of our problem in that is that we often see “our good” as easy or comfortable or blessed. I believe He sees “our good” as whatever needs to happen to mold us into someone who is more like Christ, and molding something, sometimes comes with a bit of pressure being applied to the object needing to be molded.
Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand Proverbs 19:21
Our church loves to share our “God moments”. Those times when we’ve seen God work in our lives in unusual or unexpected ways, or when He has been extraordinarily evident in our lives. This entire weekend was a huge God moment for me.
I’ve been wanting to just “get away” for quite some time. I didn’t need a big experience or super important plans, I just wanted to ‘go’. The past year has seen all those thoughts increase dramatically, as I recovered from a tough surgery that kept me close to home for far longer than I expected.
Finally the day came. My eldest son and I planned to spend a weekend out and about. His job allows me flight benefits through his employer, but I wasn’t exactly sure how they worked. And, let me tell you now, it isn’t as glamorous as you’d think. As a parent, I am the almost the lowest on the totem poll of standby fliers. A huge number of things and people can push me from a planned flight, and I often will not know for sure that I can make the trip I want until the airplane is actually boarding. There are ways to kind of make sure you will get to go. Pick a flight with a lot of empty seats, and make sure that you are going somewhere with multiple flights in the same day… that way, if you get knocked off one, you might have a chance on a later one… Definitely never make a plan that is dependant on a single flight on a single day, those are often full.
That’s the same kind of trouble we run into when we decide we know God’s will for our life in a very detailed way. We just don’t have that privilege. I believe our ministers understand completely that God is calling them to preach His word, but I’ve never met one yet that felt that the Lord had given him a very detailed plan for his life. Sometimes, the sermon they studied for all week is replaced last minute by something they never saw coming, and may not quite even understand, but if they are walking closely with the Lord, they’ve learned to trust Him in those moments.
Our weekend didn’t go as planned. I did make it onto the first flight we had hoped for (one that left at 6:00 a.m., yawn.), but, mechanical trouble delayed that flight and I missed the next one. My son carefully walked me though what to do over the phone, and we were eventually together in the Rocky Mountains… but, we lost the whole day and just had dinner and went to bed. During this time that felt lost, I was able to connect with a member of my church family and enjoy a very short breakfast - another God moment.
Our morning interruption:
The next morning saw another wrench thrown into our plans, althought this time, it became a highlight of the trip. My son opened to door to our airbnb and immediately slammed it shut. We had a visitor on the porch, a full grown moose cow who evidently was hungry for the flowers growing in the planters. Eventually, we made it to the car and on our way, with much giggling and silliness. She was literally close enough for him to reach out and touch her nose, thankfully, he wisely chose not to.
Over breakfast, we replanned our day, and decided that seeing as many 14ers as possible was the goal - onward to Independence Pass! As the day continued, I watched with joy as my oldest son, guided me to find the joy in the experience. His job requires him to be quite flexible with unexpected changes in schedule and routine. He said, “If it doesn’t happen, it wasn’t supposed to.” That’s a hard thought for someone like me, who tends to want to force the situation into the one I imagined, often making a mess of things.
Eventually, I sat back and allowed him to be in charge and we stopped whenever he saw something interesting. We marvelled at the mountains, the proof that a gigantic upheaval happened sometime in the past, and the absolute wonder of God’s creation. And, we found joy in the small things. We spent several minutes watching a little duck and some fish in a mountain stream in the middle of a beautiful valley. Nothing spectacular, but still beautiful in its simplicity.
Just a few little blessings that we found along the way…
It’s an odd thing when your child has developed a life attitude that you desperately need to apply to your spiritual life. It was a God moment for sure, when I really saw what God was trying to teach me through my son:
Man's goings are of the Lord; how can a man then understand his own way? Proverbs 20:24
While I’ve been busy trying to figure out what God was doing and why He was doing it… I have failed to just settle back and trust Him to lead. This life in its most simple form is a mystery. God’s grace is beyond a mystery, why Jesus would come to earth and live in this broken world just to die to rescue us from our own bad choices is something we can never understand. Why do we struggle and fight against the plan God has for us? There’s no need to fight to understand everything. There are so many scriptures running through my mind and heart now as I try to explain where my mind is, here are the two that stand out the most in this moment:
Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. Proverbs 3:5
The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? Jeremiah 17:9
Ideally, we accomplish this, although it will probably be something we always struggle with. Just letting go of our own expectations and allowing God to lead is so simple to say, but something that feels nearly impossible to accomplish with any semblance of perfection. We see it played out over and over again in scripture as humans give control to the Lord only to wrest it back as soon as things change.
Remembering that we can’t even trust our own heart because it is broken and ruined by sin, is one of those things that we humans struggle with. We can imagine all sorts of things that seem like they are exactly how things should be, but we are so often very wrong in our thinking.
Maybe today, we step back and trust in what the Lord has planned for us. And then, tomorrow, we get up and prayerfully try to do it again. And when we get the bright idea that we know better, we take a moment and look at all the many many things He has done better than we could have ever imagined, and try to once again lean into His will for our lives.
