The futility of making plans

Now listen, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money."  Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, "If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that." As it is, you boast and brag. All such boasting is evil. Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn't do it, sins. -James 4:13-17 (NIV)

I had a lot of plans for this summer, but those have all been largely postponed until my leg heals.  I had wanted to move our home office downstairs, and start setting up Samantha's nursery in the room that the office had been in.  James' aunt has kindly offered us some furniture for the nursery, and I wanted to get it moved up here from Louisiana.  I wanted to finish decorating our basement - we were almost finished before we left for our trip.  We have started preparing the nursery, but everything is out of place.  The crib is in pieces in the dinning room, along with part of the changing table.  The rest of the nursery funiture that we have so far is in pieces in the family room.

It has been hard for me to just wait.  I do not like to do things at the last minute.  I like to have a plan and at least try to follow through with it.  It is hard for me to adjust when unexpected events force me to change my plans or put them on hold.  I get anxious about completing the task.

When James was driving me to the hopsital in Montana I told him that we take our safety for granted at times.  There are things that I am fearful of - like flying - that I will always pray about beforehand.  I had a healthy respect for horses before the accident.  They are big animals, and you have to be careful.  I never expected to actually get injured on a trail ride.  I'd been on guided tail rides before, and those horses were really docile and slow.  We didn't know that we'd be sharing the trail with animals like bears.  We never saw one, but we knew there was one in the area.  That very well could have been what spooked the horses.

Those verses from James have been on my mind lately.  It is not us who are truly in control of our lives.  God knows the plans that he has for us.  None of us can fortell the future, and nothing is certain about our lives - except that they will end one day.  I think I would have less difficultly adjusting when something unexpected happpens if I could remember that God is in control and he knows what is good for us.