Pencil Plans

It is scheduled right in the middle of winter, right when you need it most.
It is a touch of spring when the air is frigid and the snow is on the ground.
It coaxes the next season to come, teasing those who visit with the promise of spring.
The Philadelphia Flower Show will open at the end of the month.

I have never visited the Flower Show.
I was supposed to go years ago, when a day had been on the calendar for a month.
The morning I was supposed to go to the Flower Show was a typical mom morning.
Four children went to school but the littlest one woke up feverish and sick.

My plans needed to change.
It was a “stay at home and cuddle” kind of day instead of a visit the Flower Show day.
There would be other flower shows.
The most important thing was to get my little girl well again.

Bible study is on the calendar.
It is a necessary time of being in the Word and being with other women.
Your bag is packed; your Bible is safely tucked inside.
MOM, I don’t feel good! and you know by their eyes that it will be another day at home.

A lunch shopping day was planned with a friend.
Your child at college, with no car on campus, wants to come home for the weekend.
The lunch-shopping with your friend day can be rescheduled.
The ride home in the car is an opportunity to share hearts.

Pencil Plans.
Plans we make with good intentions of fulfilling.
But something else prevents them from happening.
Something else needs to take priority over the plans we made.

Mothers know about pencil plans.
Usually in the winter months, all of their plans need to be written in pencil.
Sick children seem to endlessly pass the germs one to another.
It is a constant battle to keep everyone healthy.

Young mothers get frustrated.
They feel as if they need to fumigate their house.
They want to open all the windows and let the germs out and the clean air in.
I remember those feelings.

Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this 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.” As it is, you boast and brag. All such boasting is evil. Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins. (James 4:13-17)

If God wills.
If God wills, I will go here or there.
If God wills, I will do this or that.
My plans are in pencil, so God’s plans can override them, if need be.

Often, God’s plans override our plans.
We don’t realize it at the time, but God’s plans are far better.
We can’t imagine how anything can replace the wonderful plans we have made.
Yet God replaces them with no explanation, and we must submit.

All Truth comes from God’s Word.
Truth is often reflected in literature.
The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry in culture.
That is a line from a poem, “To a Mouse” by Robert Burns.

Writers do not usually credit Scripture with the ideas for their poems and stories.
Yet, God’s Truth is there nonetheless, even if it is not footnoted.
God’s Truth is undeniable.
We cannot run away from it.

If you fail to plan, you plan to fail, so the saying goes.
So we plan our schedules, our finances, and our retirement.
At any moment, God can change our plans.
God has veto power over everything even those things we think we have firmly planned.

So plan away, after prayer.
Plan your afternoon, your day, your month, and your year.
Just make sure you do one thing.
Make sure you write those plans in pencil.

If the Lord wills, we will do this or that.
That simple statement acknowledges His veto power over your life.
Do we honestly want to plan our life ourselves?
Do we really think we are capable of such a feat?

To say we will give Him control is false.
God already has control.
God can change the course of our lives in an instant.
We chisel our plans on marble and get frustrated when the marble crumbles.

Write your plans in pencil.
Submit to God’s authority and accept His erasures.
Only God can turn our marble-chiseled plans into something exquisite for His glory.
Only God, with His Sovereign veto power, can make our feeble plans extraordinary.

His plan is far better than any plan we can ever imagine.
Got your pencil ready?
If the Lord wills.
Always the perfect plan.