Today this New Year is one week old. Like a new-born baby so much is yet before us, all of it unknown. Or is it?
Yes, we all have our plans, our hopes and our dreams and we count on those plans happening. Last summer Dennis and I had planned a vacation. Accordingly we traveled, arrived and began to do what we had expected: relax, read and take lots of walks to refresh our souls.
But on the morning of our first full day in our tucked away cabin in the Rocky Mountains I awoke with my back hurting. Never having had back issues in my life I ignored it, jumped out of bed, and got my coffee intending to get comfortable on the couch and read. But each step made it increasingly worse and within minutes I was back in bed in agony.
My dear husband made phone calls to our doctor back home and then raced down the mountain to the pharmacy and back with a steroid pack in just over an hour. After two days the medication finally brought relief and some of our vacation was salvaged, but when the steroids wore off the pain returned which changed my life for the next six weeks.
Even though I fully believe in God’s sovereignty, the reality of losing the week of rest we both needed and felt we deserved had to be faced. I replayed the situation in my mind a hundred times trying to figure out what had happened and why. (Later I decided it was the “jumping” out of the very high log bed that caused my disc to get pinched.) Yet there was no changing it, no do-overs or ‘take two.’ What choice I did have was to give thanks in a very uncomfortable situation, do all we could to improve it and ask God to teach me, to be real and to work His plans for good.
As James 4:14 reminds us, “you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow.” But there is One who does. Nothing is unknown to Him. Remembering this reality every day helps us keep perspective when plans go as intended and when they don’t.
