Not According to Plan

May 7, 2009

Today's Reading: 1 Samuel 20-21 and Mark 1

David and Jonathan had to play spies when Saul was gunning for David. In one of their covert operations, they had to resort to coded messages.

At one point, they met out in a field, and a message of whether or not it is safe is translated with arrows. You know the story, but I suppose that I could waste some space going into detail.

Essentially, if Jonathan said the arrows are close, then David would be fine. However, he said that he was far away. Yeah, that is a signal that the coast is very much not clear.

However, something happens that was not discussed in the plan. Jonathan sends his servant away, and then decides to meet with David himself. In all honesty, if he wanted to meet with David, then why did he just say: “Hey, let’s meet here”.

Why do all those stupid codes, man? Seriously. Is there not enough excitement in your life that you had to do these James Bond espionage tactics?

Obviously, things just don’t go according to the plan, assuming that there was one.

In the same manner, the plan that Jesus had to spread his love in the world was somewhat hindered when he told someone not to tell people about him. You want to know what? It didn’t work. Instead, the guy became known as the biggest blabbermouth in the Bible.

Yeah, he couldn’t keep his mouth shut. I wonder if Jesus meant for this to happen. In other words, does God ever tell us to do something because He knows that we are going to do the opposite? If so, then, dang! You can’t really deal with something like that. I mean, seriously, then you will have to second guess a lot of things.

I mean, maybe God doesn’t want us to follow the Ten Commandments. Maybe I should break a few.

Okay, disclaimer. I am not advocating breaking God’s law. All I am saying is that if you did, God has a plan around that.

Yeah, he ain’t like us, who comes up with these plans that don’t really work well, pratical-wise. Then if they get screwed up, we may not work around it.

However, this also gives us some assurance that when things don’t go “according to plan”, we know that there is some bigger plan that catches us when our plans fall through. I’m sure that I have said this all before, but for some reason, I have to remind myself of it as well.