Last week I started the Advent journey with great expectations. I was anticipating exactly how the season would go and within the first few days those expectations played out totally different than I had anticipated. I had great intentions of writing every day, whether anyone reads or not, as a discipline for the season. This week I'm praying about and thinking about plans.
Whenever we go on a vacation I start the plans and preparation months in advance. The planning is almost as enjoyable, for me, as the actual event. In 2013 my husband and I celebrated our 30th anniversary. Something that had been on my bucket of life list since I was a young girl was to visit New England in the fall. Our anniversary is in November but we made the decision to visit Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine in late September in hopes of seeing fall colors, but not severe winter weather. I started planning that trip about 8 months in advance. With the help of friends and family who had already been on similar trips I had a stack of maps, brochures, suggested sites and places to visit. I also had ordered travel guides and borrowed books from the library. I kept all of that in a pretty box by my chair and would often page through the material and dream of that trip. I made our lodging reservations about 6 months in advance then planned our driving route for each day on the nearly 2 week long trip. The plan was in place and all of my information was neatly printed out in a convenient binder to take along on the trip. When the day finally arrived I was ready and anxious to board that plane, pick up the rent car and be off for the first adventure. The best laid plans! From the very first day when we arrived at the Boston airport some of the plans didn't go as expected. Though I had been told about possible delays on that route out of the city I didn't expect it to go as it did. As we sat in that tunnel and in traffic delays I found myself praying "please God, don't make the whole trip be like this!" When you have a spouse that doesn't like being in the car on a good day, imagine being behind the wheel (me) and listening to the grumbling about being stuck in traffic on the first day of our long awaited trip. When we finally arrived at our first bed and breakfast location in Mystic, CT I was wondering if the entire trip would be a stressful as that first couple of hours.
This Advent season has kind of started out in the same way. I had anticipated what the next few weeks would look like. I have a devotional series that I want to complete in these weeks leading up to Christmas. I have work, family and special activities that I anticipated would go a certain way, and already, just one week in, plans have not gone as expected. So what do you do when that happens? Did I just throw up my hands when our arrival in Boston was not the ideal start to a dream vacation? No. We settled in and I got out my travel plan and from then on we just went with the flow. Did we still have unexpected things come up along the way? Of course! But the plan was just that, a plan - a guide. When we encountered a detour, we took it. When we saw something along the roadside that wasn't in my written schedule we stopped and looked. Some of the best things we did on that trip were totally spontaneous and unexpected, like these awesome river rock sculptures that we happened upon beside a small winding road in Vermont.
As we begin our second week of Advent I want to encourage you to look at your plans, just as I am having to do. Will every event, family gathering, meal, gift and relationship go as you plan? Probably not. Do we throw it all out when things go wrong? I hope not. Plans are good things to have in place, but so is trust in God. To look to Him as things unfold. To realize that something that may not have been in YOUR plan may be even better when you follow His lead. This last weekend we had some early family holiday events and it was a wonderful time together with some of our closest family members that we won't see on the actual holiday. There was an expectation in place for a special meal that didn't go exactly as planned. As things unfolded there were gifts given, relationships formed and prayers that wouldn't have happened if the evening had gone as originally planned. In the past I would have been the worst one about feeling cheated or upset if things didn't go as planned. As I look back on this last weekend I realize that God had some great things planned, and His plan was much better than mine. So make your plans, but be ready to adjust as that plan unfolds.
Prayer focus today: As you go about your day, notice when unexpected things happen and pray that you will see the good in them. If you see someone that is in distress or upset, reach out to them with a kind word or deed, then pray that they too will see the goodness in each situation.
No comments:
Post a Comment