God’s Plan is Better Than Your Plan
My dear “ninth graders,”
You, Class of 2020, are graduating high school during a pandemic. And there’s just no other way to say it than to say that that sucks. You’ve missed a huge hunk of your final semester of high school. You didn’t get to go on your senior trip—with me! (And I think I was just as much looking forward to it as you were!) You’ve missed the banquet, the lock in, and the musical. Then, like salt in an open wound, you’ll have graduation online.
Yup. Sucky just about sums it up.
You know who’s to blame for all this, right? As in, you know who caused this to happen, right? God did this. It’s not that he merely allowed it to happen. God wrote these chapters of the history of the human race this way. “I am the Lord, and there is no other. I form light and create darkness, I make well-being and create calamity, I am the Lord, who does all these things” (Isaiah 45:6-7).
And God cast you as characters of this great play called life to enter the stage at this particular moment in history and to graduate right here and right now, and he did it purposefully. “In your book were written every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there were none of them” (Psalm 139:16). That includes every last day of the second semester of your senior year. And it includes every last day that God so chooses to allow you to get out of bed in the morning.
We must wrestle with whether or not we’re OK with that arrangement—the arrangement being that God is God and we are not. He’s the author holding the pen, and while, yes, I believe he’s the kind of author who interacts with his characters, in the end, he chooses to write each scene as he sees fit, and he doesn’t need any writing tips or advice from us as Romans 11:34 makes crystal clear: “[W]ho has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?” Answer? No one. Ever. He simply doesn’t need help running his universe. The question simply comes down to whether or not we’re willing to accept that.
Jesus taught us to pray this way: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:9). Most of us can quote the entire prayer, but do we really want the desires expressed in that prayer? Do we really want God’s will to be done, even if that means a complete derailing of our will? Do we really think that God’s plan is better than whatever we might come up with, even if his plan doesn’t come with any explanations and he never feels the need to inform us of what’s going on, apparently just like he never informed Job of what was going on in his case?
We are experiencing the unfolding of God’s will every day. The shutting down of your school during the very final months of your high school career are part of that will. God hasn’t seen fit to tell me—or anyone of you as far as I know—what he’s up to, but he’s got this. And there could be no better way to write this chapter than how he’s doing it right now. You must choose whether or not you’ll surrender to that amazing, loving will.
That was the choice that Jesus himself ultimately had to make. He genuinely didn’t want to experience the pain and suffering and separation from his Father that he knew it would cost him to save the world. He asked God if there wasn’t any other way. And what did he say next? “Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done” (Luke 22:42). How was Jesus able to pray such a prayer? He was fully convinced that God’s will was better than his will. He was sure that there was more joy to be hand in doing things God’s way—even if that way included a lot of sorrow and even death—than if Jesus were to insist on his own way. He saw “the joy that was set before him” (Hebrews 12:2), and went for it because there was no higher joy down any other path.
The Bible is one long story of God interrupting people’s lives: Noah, Abraham and Sarah, Jacob, Joseph, the entire Jewish people, Moses, Rahab, Ruth, David, Jeremiah, Daniel, Esther, Nehemiah, John the Baptist’s parents, Mary and Joseph, Peter, James, John, and all the other disciples, Paul, and on and on throughout history. God interrupts people’s plans. And his plans are so much better. They’re harder for sure. But they’re better.
Like the saints of old did, you must choose, too. Will you submit yourself to God’s will even when that seriously messes up your own will? Will you surrender the right to run your life and accept God’s plan for you? Do you see that his ways are designed so as to bring you to the best end possible , and that if you were insist on your own will here and now, you would forfeit dump truck loads of joy for all eternity?
You know, life will one day move on. New days will dawn. But other circumstances will arise in your life in which you will need this lesson even more then than you need it right now. So use this as an opportunity to practice. Practice thanking God for disrupting your plans, and practice trusting that there could be no better way for you. You’re going to need to believe that until the very day you die.
There’s a lot we can learn from this pandemic. One thing is that God’s plans are better than our plans. May this be a truth you build your life on.
With much affection,
Eric
Past Posts in this Series
Truths to Build Your Life On: Open Letters to the Class of 2020, Introduction
Truths to Build Your Life On: Open Letters to the Class of 2020, Part 2
Truths to Build Your Life On: Open Letters to the Class of 2020, Part 3
Truths to Build Your Life On: Open Letters to the Class of 2020, Part 4
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