The gift of life/williams
The Plan
There is a perfect plan. I will call it ‘The Plan’ with capital letters because it is perfect in its construction. Why? Because God designed it and anything God designs is perfect. The Plan is what He has for us, daily, hourly. Our running whole life is mapped out and He can see the front to the back of our timeline.https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Jeremiah+29%3A11&version=ESV
I am on the downhill side of my own timeline. My run has years to go short of being hit by a bus, but I am closer to the back end than the front. Lately, like within the last few years, I think being this old allowed me to look, as well, front to back and see how things are connected. I can see, using my own hindsight, how things have worked out for the perfect betterment of my life, when at the time, I thought I was going to die or pass out from exhaustion and sadness.
The last few years, I have noticed a growth in our collective impatience. We are slapped and faced with attitudes, changes, and hyperbole never witnessed in human history. It used to be there were three news channels on the only three major networks. I can still name some of the 6pm news anchors. Anchors who would never use adjectives or adverbs. Those descriptive words that added color to their nouns and verbs. They rarely used them because it was up to us to figure out their news length and width and as one of them would simply say at the end of his broadcast, ‘and that’s the way it is.’ Simple, concise and we get to figure out the guts of the facts they reported.
Broadcasts, whose intent….
Now, its people, you and me and our neighbors, who run their own ‘influencer’ broadcasts. Broadcasts, whose intent is to influence us to have a certain defining moment in our decision making. It is extremely effective. You could have a dozen or so popping up on our laptops, desktops, or our phones, telling you something with the lead word in their puff piece ‘BREAKING NEWS!’ Who isn’t going to read that? It’s like yelling into a house of party guests ‘Come look! The neighbor’s house is on fire!’ Just enough to tempt those inside to come out and look at the tragedy.
Today, we the collective, seem to love tragedy. I think as humans, we always have. We have always liked to watch the house fire or watch the first part of the news with the ‘lead stories.’ Those lead stories are the sexy part of the news. It draws us in like a moth to a campfire-or maybe a house fire. That seems a better comparison. It begs us to ask, or maybe just to think to ourselves, where is god, if there is a god, in all this? A good question.
If God really was God, why would this stuff happen? Why would He let such vile anger and apparent unjustness of application if He really was who He said he was? A logical, question. Here is what I know and, after decades, have come to completely bank on and share with others my ‘banking’ practices.
If God is who he says….
If God is who he says he is-God, He is perfect. He loves perfectly. His will is perfect. He misses nothing. He, if we believe in God, also believe He is with us, in us, and loves us unto death. I can’t do that. I can love you, them, us, like God loves. But if I believe in this God, and what He has told those ions ago and who were martyred for their belief, I don’t have to do anything-except one thing. Love. Love as best I can and try to model His love. Sacrificial love.
I believe He loves me that much. Believe He is with me every day, every hour of every day. He actually delights in me. God thinks I’m funny. He smiles when He hears my name mentioned and loves talking to me in my truck or walking the dogs around the block. In the middle of the night, when I wake up to use the bathroom and Evil starts running the list of stuff I need to do or have failed at, just to cause me to be anxious and lose sleep and struggle, He tells me to ask in His name, if it is part of The Plan, to remove that Evil from my brain. Or if it shows up during the day, to calm my anxiousness because He has it. Usually, ten minutes later, I am sound asleep, or my mind is free to think about mowing the lawn or doing laundry. Peaces and calm rises again. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans%2015%3A13&version=ESV
Why is the world….
Why is the world in the shape it’s in if there is a god? Because we, the collective, have made it this way, not just now, but over the millennium. But He hasn’t forgotten us, He is not angry with us. He is with us closer than skin. He knows our heart, our needs our wants before we do. His Plan, The Plan, is perfect. It will work perfectly. It might actually get worse before it gets better, but it will get better. Better than we can imagine, but it might not happen on this side of our physical death. But if you can find that time in your day-or night, and talk to Him, he will respond. He always does. Then he will smile and with that wry smile only He has, he will tell you ‘be still and know that I am God.
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