God's Plan

It was about this time in the month of June some fifty-seven years ago that my parents took me to Young Harris College and drove away without me.   For the next two years this small north Georgia college was my home.  It gave me a strong academic beginning for what was to come.  It was a small college which provided me a safe place to figure out some of the things which had to do with figuring out who I was and what I wanted to do with my life.  It gave me leadership opportunities I would not have had in a larger college and it was a place which nurtured me in those years when my faith in God was new.     

I have always been grateful for the influence of those two years.  While it seems strange to some, it has always seemed to me that I ended up at Young Harris by divine leading.  It was not a time in my life when random decisions were made, but a time when I was able to follow what I likely did not understand to be the leading of God.  As the years have accumulated, the more I have become convinced that life is not about coincidental choices, but about God in our life.  We often throw about that Old Testament verse about God having a plan for our life without really giving it its due.     

There are times when it is hard to stand and be sure that we are in midst of God's plan.  It is hard to embrace this part of the life of faith when everything seems to be crumbling into nothing under our feet.  It is hard to see God's plan at work when our life and everything of value seems to be falling apart around us.  And maybe it is also true that it is natural for us to have difficulty seeing how God is at work when the darkness around us is so very deep, but if we can hang in there until the darkness is lifted, hindsight and faith will give us a view of what is behind which will enable us to see that we were never alone and that God was navigating the way for us in the darkness.