Unexpected
In March of this year, I was scheduled to go on a trip to Israel. It was a trip that had already been canceled and rescheduled several years before, but it looked like it might just happen this time. A few weeks before the trip, world events started to take a turn. Even as I started packing and gathering things I would need for an overseas trip, there were news headlines that threw uncertainty over my preparations. The week before we were set to leave, the trip was cancelled.
Even at the time, I could see some reasons why God allowed the cancelation: there was a death in the family, and I was able to be here to help my family with the practical side of clearing and sorting things. I also had a very productive writing trip that week, in which I finished the rough draft of a novel I would otherwise not have had time to work on till summer.
But despite seeing God’s purpose in keeping me home that week, there was still a nagging question: why had God allowed the trip to be cancelled so close to the day we were to leave?
Months went by, and the schoolyear wound to a close. I had another trip to pack for—a somewhat unexpected trip to California. As I threw together the things I would need, I kept reaching for things I had purchased for my Israel trip: a packable purse to use in the touristy areas, a long, lightweight skirt that traveled well, small travel-sized bottles of toiletries for my carry-on.
But it didn’t hit me until we were in San Francisco, and I reached into the very convenient cell phone pocket of my travel purse. Maybe I needed to pack and prepare for the trip that was canceled, so I wouldn’t have the stress of trying to figure out what I needed for this trip, which came right on the heels of the two last whirlwind weeks of school.
Now, I know a purse that’s just right for using on a trip doesn’t seem very significant when put in the perspective of world events, but it was just one of many reminders God has given me lately, that He knows exactly what He is doing.
In Isaiah 55:8-9, God tells us,
“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.”
Because God’s wisdom, knowledge, and understanding are so infinitely higher and better than any we might think we possess, we cannot always see everything He is doing in our lives.
Do I think a travel purse and clothes for three days in California are the only reasons God canceled my Israel trip when He did? Of course not! But do I think that God knew I would need those things, and orchestrated events so that I would be motivated to buy them in advance?
Absolutely!
He cares about the smallest details of our lives, even how many hairs are on our heads (Luke 12:7), so I’m sure providing the little things I needed played at least a small part in His grander design.
In a broader sense, I have had some reminders recently of just how different my life is from how I had always expected it to go. But I have found over the years that it is often in those same unexpected (and sometimes unwanted) plot twists of our lives that God’s hand is most clearly seen later on. The struggle in the moment is to choose to accept God’s wisdom when we cannot see His reasons.
God tells us in Jeremiah 29:11,
“For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.”
I have had many unexpected things this year—some good, some hard—and through each one of them I am learning to lean on the reality that God knows what He is doing.
Dear Reader, do you struggle with the unexpected, the unplanned? When life suddenly makes twists and turns and leads to places you never imagined it would take you, remember the steadfast, unchanging truth that God truly does know what He is doing. You can trust Him!
“Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths.”Proverbs 3:5-6