The Plan!
There is a quote by the Army General — Helmuth von Moltke the Elder that says: “no plan survives first contact with the enemy, or first contact with reality”. What matters is how quickly we are able to adapt and get past disappointments. What matters is how quickly one can get through heartbreak, resentment, plan-altering, dream-crushing and heart destroying moments. We need to be able to get through those seasons. There will be times in our lives, when there’ll be grief that comes with the challenges of life. Times when you look back and think about wrong decisions or mistakes that destroyed a relationship, it may be a situation where someone you promised to devote your entire life to, walked away and it seems to mess up any plans you had. Or you may be going through the pain of having raised a child in the way of the Lord, but as they grow older, they don’t seem to care about the Lord, and are derailing further and further away from the Lord, and the pain crushes your heart. Or you could be a couple who got married and hoped to have kids and build a family, yet struggle to get pregnant, let alone have kids. Or you could be a single person, who together with your friends in university planned to be married by 27, but all your friends are now married, and you’re 45, yet you keep waiting for the right person to show up. When these times come, which they certainly will, how do you get though the anxiety, uncertainty, and insecurity, particularly when you don’t know which way forward, as the plans you had are all up in smoke. You need to learn how to let go of those plans, knowing that God hasn’t abandoned you and he will bring you through.
Sometimes, we may even look for ways to rush through those dark moments, like David when he cried out in the middle of one of life’s storms: “Give me relief from my distress; have mercy on me and hear my prayer” (Psalms 4:1). However, we need to realise those dark moments are part of the healing process. It is akin to an athlete undergoing open-heart surgery, as much as he wants to get back to competing as quickly as possible, the recovery takes time, and until the doctors give him a clean bill of health, he can’t even train!
Another example is the famous conversation between Jesus and Thomas during the last supper after Jesus had predicted his denial, betrayal and crucifixion. Things looked very grim and bleak to the disciples, that Thomas said to Jesus: “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way” (John 14:5). To which Jesus responded: “I am the way, the truth and the life” (John 14:6). Often, our plans may have been noble, ideal, or well thought out, but we should never have hope or confidence in our plan, instead we should have hope and confidence in Jesus.
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Jesus is the plan!
