The Master Plans

About six months ago, I sat down and wrote out my “Master Plan” for the next six months of my life. 

My wife and I were facing some tough decisions, and we didn’t know what to do. We didn’t know which route to choose. I needed to get it all out in black and white to see what our options were, so I wrote it down. It was a beautiful, detailed plan arranged in an outlineed flowchart. I thought of all the possible things that could happen, and the best way to respond in each situation, and fit it all on one typed page. It was genius. I had gained, to the best of my human ability, foreknowledge of the next six months of my life.

Then I forgot about it.

This week, as my wife was shuffling through some papers, she found it. As she read through it, I asked, “How are we doing? Are we following the plan?”

She burst out laughing. At the very bottom of the page, after all my plans, I had written, “If XYZ happens, I don’t know what we’ll do. I guess we’ll cross that bridge if we come to it.” (I didn’t write XYZ, of course. It was an actual event that I knew was possible, but I won’t write it here on a blog.)

And guess what? The XYZ event happened this past Tuesday. Soooo, after all my planning, thinking, and preparing, we are still right back at not knowing what to do. I guess I just have to trust that Proverbs 16:9 is true: “The mind of man plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps.”

A friend of Wendy’s told her today: “The only thing you can do is do the next thing.” And she’s right. Very frequently, we don’t know ten steps ahead, or even two. All we can do is take the next step. God seems to give only enough light to take one step at a time. And we have to take it, not knowing exactly where it will lead, but trusting all the same.