“Recalculating, recalculating.”
Our techy- trained mind recognizes this too familiar voice from Ms. GPS. We’ve made a wrong move, gotten off the prescribed course and are headed away from our destination. What if the message was, “You need to start over”, or “There’s no going back”? “You blew it, Knucklehead!” Or what if she just shut down and you had to wait a long time before she would respond again?
Does Ms. GPS offer more grace than your God? When you blow it in decision making, or take a detour that costs time or expense, what does your spiritual GPS say? I’ve heard the accusatory messages far oftener than the recalculating prompt. One dictionary definition defines calculate as, making suitable or fit for a purpose. We count on the GPS to make a suitable plan for getting us to our destination. We get off track; the GPS wizard makes adjustments. We choose a detour, and she wastes no time in trying to get us back on course.
God has made a perfect plan for us to reach our purpose in him. What if we would let him recalculate the Plan when we get off track? Instead, we tend to feel hopelessness or try and refigure things from our point of view. Or we’ve deliberately chosen a different path. Can we still trust God to work all things together for good? Some of the hardest voices for me to shut off in those times are the accusations that sound far more irreparable than recalculating. I may also imagine God is silently cutting me off and will make me wait for further instruction while he first gets his anger under control, or until I feel sufficiently punished, whichever comes first. Wouldn’t it be more in line with his character to embrace the image of his gentle wisdom making suitable plans to get us back on track? And wouldn’t punishing us by making us wait seem counterproductive to His desire to have us make the most of every opportunity? His grace says that we’ll find a place to u-turn, that he’ll do the recalculating while we trust his computations and that he’ll again be there to lead us turn by turn.
Let’s confidently take God’s directions without fearing our mistakes or fearing getting lost. Just as Ms. GPS has scoped out the route ahead and possesses the knowledge to inform us of the comfort stops, the lodging places and the filling stations along the way, so the Master planner of our lives knows the path we are traveling. We’ll do well to trust his global positioning system to get us to our destination.
Enjoyed your thoughts. We do tend to be more unforgiving when people are "off track"... I do wonder, though, if thinking of God recalculating His plans when we get off track sells Him short. I believe that God is outside of time and therefore able to know all our choices "before" He even created us, so He was able to anticipate every one of our wrong steps and perfectly tune His plans for us to those choices. We still always have free will and always try to make the right choices, but we can't do anything that surprises God or messes up His plans because He's already planned for those exact messes... What do you think?
ReplyDeleteLaura, I think we're tracking together. :) He does know the end from the beginning and is not surprised by our choices. When Ro. says He works all things together for good, I see Him taking the consequences of our choices and using them, turning them into good, good that we recognize as His work in us. He knew how all along, but I find comfort in thinking of His grace working now on my behalf. Thanks for commenting!
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