Are you a planner? Do you have an organized journal or calendar for planning? Do you make lists of the things you need to get done, day to day, week to week, month to month? Do you plan out quarterly or yearly goals?
I am a wanna-be planner. I pretend to be more organized than I actually am. I buy planners at the beginning of every year, and I start writing things down. But I inevitably become side-tracked, or plans continually change, and I lose track of my plans and my lists. Of course there are missteps, and there is often confusion. If I don’t add things to the calendar or my lists, they are easily forgotten. But what I have learned is that God still orders my steps. Life doesn’t stop because I have failed to write it down. The problem lies in my failure to consult with God about my plans.
Our human bains often visualize our plans, lists, steps, in a particular order. It might be a mountain, but generally it’s still a straight line. And in our humanness, we often think our daily plans are too mundane for God. These are not the things He concerns Himself with. These are just unimportant details of our lives that need to happen. So often, we believe our plans have failed, when they do not go according to our own plans; when instead of a neat straight line, there are zigs and zags, and even drop offs where we lost the plan entirely.
Here’s the thing about climbing mountains; it is almost never done in a straight line. You can map out a perfectly good plan in your own head, which seems efficient, and time saving, but some of that path might be dangerous. There may be patches of fog where visibility is poor. There may be areas of loose gravel, where it is difficult to maintain your footing. There may even be times when you have to wait out a storm before continuing on.
And while all you can see at the moment, is the base of the mountain in front of you, and in your head, a straight line up makes the most sense, God can see the whole mountain. He can see the fog. He can see the areas of danger.
Include God in your planning. Take comfort in the zigs and the zags, knowing that your Creator has mapped out the safest, most efficient path, whether you can see that in your humanness or not. Have faith.