One Instant Destroys Plans
Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.”
-- James 4:14-15
We are a people who make a lot of plans. We’re always planning to go somewhere or do something. We plan when we are to wake up and when we are to go to sleep. We fill our days with scheduled activities, whether it‘s school or a job, golf or shopping, kids‘ soccer games or a movie. We sure are an organized bunch of folks.
Until the day we wake up and realize that all those plans were worthless. Because sometimes when we’re just out living our lives, something happens that shatters everything we knew as reality. We are faced with a new world, a new order to our days, a new disorder to our lives.
Yesterday I learned that a former co-worker suffered a massive heart attack. He’s lying in a hospital bed in ICU and the doctors don’t expect him to make it. Another young woman was in a car wreck and airlifted to a hospital three hours away. A close friend had a freak motorcycle wreck that has left her with leg and hand injuries she’ll be dealing with for months.
They all had plans. Those plans didn’t include lengthy hospital stays or death. A recent widow noted her first anniversary without her husband. They’d planned to return to the site of their honeymoon 29 years before. They hadn’t planned to be separated so soon in life. They had too much to do and too much laughter to share.
We all make plans. It’s what life is all about. What would we be without hopes and dreams, schedules and destinations? But James was right when he told her to understand that God’s will could alter those plans in a heartbeat.
Please don’t misunderstand what I’m saying. God doesn’t cause bad things to happen to us. But God has given us all free will to choose to our own paths. Sometimes our bodies have heart attacks or develop cancer. Sometimes our vehicles crash, either from our errors, the errors of someone else or just a slick spot in the road. Sometimes the people we love are suddenly gone, suddenly facing a catastrophic illness, or suddenly in dire need.
We can either step up and help, or sit back and watch. We can either alter our plans and put people first, or stand there and let needs go unmet. We can either do what Jesus called us to do, or decide that our faith doesn’t extend from good intentions to good deeds.
Sooner or later everyone encounters a moment when everything they had planned lies destroyed. We’re fortunate if God uses those around us to hold us up until we can stand alone again. And if we’re especially blessed if we’re the ones God calls to help our family and friends through the crisis that destroyed all their plans.
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