Thursday, January 26, 2012

God Has a Plan. No, Really He Does.



Just like the title up there, God has a plan.

That phrase right there used to bug the crap out of me.  I used to be extremely cynical (and if I'm perfectly honest with myself, I kinda still am) and I saw that expression as a cheap way out for explaining away anything bad that happened.  It seemed incredibly easy to me to find flaws in this argument.  One of my most standard questions to those who said this were "Why would He take away your dad when you still need him?" or "Why does God let war exist?"  Many detractors of religion still use these as reasons to not believe.

But since regaining my faith in God, I'm starting to learn that the whole "God has a plan" thing really does hold some water.  You just need perspective to see how everything fits together.  

Seem a bit hard to believe? Well then let me give you an example from my life.  A few weeks ago, a new semester started at my university.  I had picked all my classes in December, and was just killing time till the first day of class rolled around.  But the day before school started, a professor of mine decided she had changed her mind about letting me take a class, since she didn't feel I was ready to move on in the subject.  This one little decision meant that I would have to completely redo my class schedule. The night before classes started.

I was a frantic, stressed-out mess the whole day, as I tried to convince the professor that she was wrong and that I should be allowed to take the class.  (My loving boyfriend was a real trooper for all this, and calmly tried to remind me that "God had a plan," but did I want to listen? Nope. Instead I wanted to cry and maybe scream a bit.)  But the professor had put her foot down, so out came the class listings to try and throw together a new schedule for the next morning.  It was a bit hectic, but now I wouldn't change a thing about what happened.

Why? you might ask.  Well, I ended up having to pick entirely different classes.  My previous schedule had mostly been filed with the classes needed for the new major I was starting (I had been planning to be a double major by the time I graduated), but I didn't think any of them would be particularly interesting.  With my new schedule, I wasn't able to take any of those classes, which meant I would be unable to do the second major I had thought about (but wasn't crazy excited for).  So blessing #1 came right there.  God had saved me from forcing myself down a path that I was not happy with (and would therefore not do well at, since my heart was not in it).  And after a few days of going to the new classes, I realized that this schedule worked a lot better for me, and I was actually excited to go to class.  Which became blessing #2.

Looking back through the clarifying lens of hind-sight helps you see how things worked together to create the end result.  I've found that it's through this reflecting on the past that you can see how God was working in your life the whole time.  God really does have a plan, we just can't always see it because 1) we're not God and 2) being so close to the action makes it hard to see the big picture (like He can).

I invite you to take a look at some event in your life.  How did it affect the other things that happened around that time?  What did you learn from it?  Or how did it play into later parts of your life?  Can you see ways in which God was working?  I'd love to hear your story.

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