The Great Escape

On the way to the coffee pot just after seven o'clock, I heard a strange bovine sound outside the door.  When I opened the front door, three cows that belonged inside the fenced pasture were walking around the truck at the front door.  Suddenly the morning was filled with getting the escapees back in the pasture, getting out the chainsaw to cut up the partially rotted tree that had fallen over the fence, digging some post holes, and repairing the fence.  Just after noon I made it back to the house thinking about all the plans I had made for the day.     

The Word has a word for such plans as it says, "Come now, you who say, 'Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a town and spend a year there doing business and making money.'  Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring."  (James 4:13-14)   All of us are prone to make plans and some of them come to fruition, but it is also true that every day has within it the potential to play havoc with our best made plans.  When life seems to make mincemeat out of our plans, we tend to fret, get upset, and go into some kind of inner tantrum.     

It does not usually occur to us to consider that God might be in the mayhem.  When we pray we ask God to lead us and to protect us, but we do not always think that the mayhem might be a part of His response to our petitions.  Perhaps, God had me in the pasture this morning to keep from some other thing which would have proven to be more troubling than getting cows back in a pasture.  Who knows and who can understand the ways of a God who cares for us and is always working to bring good into our life even though unexpected difficulty is all around us?