Write Your Plans in Pencil

   Several items comprise my thoughts this morning, and they all seem to involve the word "Planning"

   Let's see: There was the movie on Saturday night
                   There was church yesterday
                   There are the things that I plan to do today
                   There is the short trip I am planning for this week, and
                   There is a longer trip at the last of this summer, so how do they all come together, or do they?

   The movie we went to see, Million Dollar Arm, I liked, but the thing that I thought about most, upon reflecting on the story, concerned the change in the lives of the two Indian boys.

   As they lived their lives, ordinary lives, in India, they had no idea of where they would be in a year or so and how that time would impact their lives for the future. They had no clue. They had plans I guess, plans to do what they were doing for a time, plans to work, maybe plans to marry and have families, plans to live a normal (if that is a correct term in this instance) Indian life.

   But then, over in the US, a man concocted a plan that concerned boys in India, baseball, and a way to get his company back in the black. No one knew how all that would work together. No one knew how it would work itself out, much less who would be affected, especially those 2 boys.

   Then in church yesterday, I heard about a couple who belonged to our body, a man and wife living through a hard time. At the end of her pregnancy, as she went to get the final check up before delivery, they learned that there was no heartbeat. The little boy had died in the womb, and she had to deliver a stillborn child into the world. How incredibly hard that must have been for both of them.

   They had plans, I know, and now, what? My heart grieves for them.

   Then there are the puny and insignificant things that I plan for today, and this week, and this year. I know I need to plan ahead, but I don't know the events in the world that will affect any of them.

   God knows, and I have no control.

   I write that, and know that the answer to all that uncertainty I have talked about in the previous paragraphs is right there.

   God knows the past, the present and the future, and He cares.

   I have to plan. I need to have things in place to get things accomplished, but the culmination to those plans are not in my hands. They need to be written on disposable paper, maybe even in invisible ink. Their fruition is not in my control, for today, not for this week, or for farther out there.

   How simple is it to live in the easy and good and be thankful for "Thy will be done"?

   How difficult to live in the hard and wonder about "Thy will be done"?

   The implications of this prayer are huge. I will pray it, but the question is, How will I live it?

   If my plans fly away, will my contentment also?