There IS a Plan

As I write this, I am enthralled by the full moon shining in my office window. The view is glorious! The moon is high enough to silhouette the tall trees on the property behind me. It casts a deep gray glow through the black boughs with the moon itself center stage. Just lovely! There is a vivid point made in this, no matter how darkness may seem to shroud our world at any point in time, there is beauty to be found in God’s creation.

  

Romans 8:28 And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.

In her book, Let Me Be a Woman, Elizabeth Elliot records the story of a friend who had great difficulty accepting the looks God had given her. While everyone this girl knew had beautiful golden hair, hers was black. And while they were all still growing, she had stopped. She grew to be only about four feet ten inches tall.

Eventually, she reached the country to which God had called her to be a missionary. One day, she stood on the wharf in Shanghai and looked around at the people to whom He had called her. “Every single one of them” she said, “had black hair. And every one of them had stopped growing when I did.” She was able to look to God and exclaim, “Lord God, You know what You’re doing!”

This story reminds me of a personal experience. When I was a young girl, some of my interests were different than those of my friends. We would be together to play and they loved to cut pictures out of catalogues (Sear & Roebuck’s & Montgomery Ward’s – remember those?) of babies and pretend it was their baby or play with paper dolls. Me, I preferred to cut pictures out of magazines, especially National Geographic, of different countries I wanted to visit and things I wanted to see in each country. I would plan trips while my friends picked out baby furniture in the catalogue. They didn’t understand my fascination with other countries and cultures. I didn’t either, really, I just knew that was the stuff that moved me.

Years later, as a missionary, I could see where God was preparing my heart for the work He called me to while I was but a young school girl. It’s awesome to think back at my life and see how He was shaping me all along for that service while I was just growing into it without a clue. I took the long, hard road many times that strayed off His path but He would turn me back around in spite of myself. It just hit me…tho sometimes my husband finds my tendency to plan an annoying trait, being a focused ‘planner’ was part of His plan! Sorry, Honey, God did it…you’re stuck with it!

We all struggle from time to time with something specific and ask, “Why Lord?” Won’t it be awesome when we finally reach a point we can just roll with the flow confident that God knows what He’s doing! Fortunately for us, He is not intimidated by our questions when we sound like a three-year old with our barrage of “Why…why…why…?" We may not understand it today — but He has known these things from the very beginning. And He really is carrying out His great plan in us! Cheer up! God is preparing His vessels for GREAT things!