The Big Picture

With all of the stresses in our lives, in or out of the ivory tower, it is important to stop from time to time and remember that our Lord is sovereign. He is bigger than anything we deal with. He has conquered (past tense) death. He knows the end from the beginning.

It ends well.

SDG

The Western Domino Effect

A staff member told me about a colleague who was running a special ad hoc lab course for our extension services. This instructor is from a very different culture, and my staff member was commenting about how that influenced her approach to unforeseen difficulties. She would just roll with them like it was no big deal and even normal.

The staff member and I were laughing about how many Americans in the same situation, ourselves included, would get frustrated over such hassles. It is surprising to see how much we expect our lives to run according to plan, like clockwork. It is simply ingrained in us that if we prepare properly, our plans will come to fruition, in spite of all of the evidence to the contrary in real life.

We are so used to our technological marvels working to give us control of our environments that we expect to have control in most or all areas. We are caught off guard and even feel personally insulted when gaps appear in our plans. My staff member quipped that it is as if we have a giant set of dominoes set up to fall and one suddenly turns out to be spaced just a little too far away from the next, and we ‘know’ we’ve set them properly.

P-L-A-N-S

“For I know the plans I have for you,” says the LORD, “Plans to give you a hope and a future.”

Jeremiah 29:11

“Many are the plans in a person’s heart, but it is the LORD’s purpose that prevails.”

Proverbs 19:21

“The LORD foils the plans of the nations;
                He thwarts the purposes of the peoples.
But the plans of the LORD stand firm forever,
                the purposes of his heart through all generations.

Psalm 33:10-11

In our family, the joke is that “plan” is a four-letter word. I say “plan” the way Fonzie would say “wrong”—like a car trying to start with a bad battery. The word is stuck, firmly, hooked on the epiglottis, with severe tissue damage when it at lasts rips free.