Some days simply refuse to go according to plan. And yesterday was one of those days.
The plan was elegant in its simplicity. There was a church I wanted to check out in the morning. It wasn’t located exactly near my hotel room. But hey, for the first time on this trip I had a day with no work scheduled so why not? Then I was going to head back “home†to the hotel, goof off in the room, write an email to my sister, get some more groceries for my extended stay, do some laundry and catch some dinner.
And the day started off well too. I slept in, drove up to see the church. It took a bit longer than I’d planned. No problem. I planned for that possibility. They have an early afternoon service. So I went to find a coffee shop to hang out and read.
But no plan ever survives first contact with the enemy, eh?
I didn’t even get out of my car at the coffee shop when the phone rang and I got called into work stuff.
So instead of the leisurely day of goofing off I had planned my day ended up involving lots of driving and a trip to the airport to get a rental car.
Ah, well. At least I still managed to get the laundry done and find some groceries (sorry Sis! 😳 )
And then at the end of the day I actually connected with Liz Strauss finally! She made it back to town. She scored me an invite to a party at the Museum of Contemporary Art on Thursday night before I fly out on Friday morning. Talk about a nice way to cap off an otherwise frustrating day!
It got me thinking about how much control we really don’t have in our lives. I mean we can plan for all sorts of eventualities but in the end we just plain aren’t in charge of how things work out.
I wonder what kind of thoughts were going through Paul’s mind the day the ship he was a prisoner on sunk around him, he got washed up onto shore and bitten by a poisonous snake. I’m pretty sure that wasn’t the way he planned for that trip to work out! (You can read about it here in Acts 27:27 – 28:6)
There is a Proverb that says
We can make our plans, but the LORD determines our steps.
And often it works out much better than we anticipated in the end if we only make the effort to look at it through the lens of the long view.
So I’m interested to see what today will bring.
Enjoy!
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