Who here is a planner?
Meals, schedules, vacations…
I get you. I like to have life mapped out. It’s so much easier to make the plans in advance, then just follow along when the time comes.
When traveling, I like to know where I’ll be laying my head at night.
On one vacation, my husband and I scooted along the southern end of the DC Beltway and crossed through Maryland into Delaware. After we took time to eat supper and turned south, it was dark. Really dark.
We hadn’t made reservations for the night and when we saw the lights of that Days Inn, we were so relieved and so excited until we learned there were no rooms available. It was only 9 o’clock, we should find something soon enough.
Did I mention it was dark? We finally saw another mound of lights ahead and came to the truck stop there. A little motel stood right beside the truck stop and had a vacancy. Yes! It was clean, dated, had a rock solid bed, and a hot shower.
It wasn’t my first choice of a place to stay, but it was a place to sleep and shower.
The truth is, we’ve come across places like this in our travels even when we did plan. Remind me to tell you about the vacation house near Anderson, SC sometime.
Here’s the thing, we can plan meals and appetites change. We can plan schedules and an extra work or school or sports meeting is dropped on us that change them. We can plan our travel and sickness, mechanical failure, desires change and the plans are out the window.
What’s amazing is, God doesn’t deal with the planning upsets. His plans don’t fail. Ever.
If we’re remaining close enough to Him, we will see our plans match His. Our travel may include slowing down enough to see the people around us, to visit with friends and strangers. We might map our trip to include service at ministries. Or we might surround our family with love so a night at the truck stop isn’t really failure.
Conversely, if we’re not close to the Lord, we might plan and plan only to see that plan thwarted and another implemented. If we have wandered from Him, we may resent this change instead of recognizing His plans are perfect and ours may not be.
Wouldn’t it be nice if God would just fill out our schedule and make our travel itinerary? Just write in all the things we’re supposed to do, places to be?
Maybe, though, what He wants is for His followers to be close enough to Him to hear that still, small voice that says turn here or there.
Maybe if we spend more time with Him and our perspectives change, our plans will coincide with His plans and interruptions become just another leg of the journey.
Today, let’s open our Bibles and hearts before we open our planners.
Coffee, Bible, Journal.
