Deadlines. We think we have hard, set fast deadlines that won’t change, or times when events start or end. Once this time passes, this event is over. Once this time passes, if I haven’t finished this activity or paper or work, I’m done, I’m screwed, this is something I was supposed to have done by this specific time. Everything seems so hard fast and unchanging.
This week, every day I’ve worked, the times changed. Initially, we were supposed to start the shift at 12:15 – nope! Now it’s starting at noon, and we’re being told five minutes before the doors open, and we all have to scramble desperately to try to get it done. I’m supposed to be at work an hour early in order to set up, but I really don’t want to? It’s a quick fix to get a sub just for that set up.
Normally, when I write articles for the Odyssey, they’re due at 5 pm on Fridays. This week, however, we had to turn them in by noon on Thursday. It’s a holiday weekend, things change. It’s understandable. But events like this make it clear that none of this is set in stone.
James 4:13-15 addresses this quite nicely: “Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.”” You don’t know. You never know what life will have in store, whether it’s little things like your work being at a different time, or you needing to finish schoolwork during the summer to properly catch up, or your vacation plans being rearranged.
Honestly, how many of us thought we had our lives all figured out when we entered college, and found them completely turned on their heads? Maybe we realized we didn’t really like our major. Our college wasn’t for us. Our major was going away. Or our career goals would better be served by a different major, minor, more time, less time, etc.
It’s impossible to plan life out.
I may want to map out what exactly I’m doing on my break in between shifts at work, but chances are, it’s never going to match up with exactly what I want to do. My sister may plan out exactly what she wants to eat after church each Sunday, but that’s not always going to work out for her.
I may have a picture in my mind of where I’ll be in twenty years, what I look like, but I can tell you with the utmost certainty, right now, that God is going to completely flip that around.
We can’t plan ahead. No, I don’t mean literally – make dinner plans for next week. Plot out that vacation. Sketch out study time in your planner. But we need to be flexible, and we need to understand that sometimes? You just roll with the punches that life throws at you, cause God likes to keep you on your toes like that.
It’s something my family’s found, often enough. I’d say it’s our greatest strength.
