Plans for the Future?

Our plans for the future have been very disrupted by the coronavirus and its implications for us all. What do we do, when there’s not much we can do?! Especially when our hopes for further lifting of restrictions are threatened this week by events in Melbourne, and an ongoing ‘spike’? In a nutshell: we wait, we hope, we have patience, we trust in God.
 
This week I was reading in Proverbs, chapter 15 from verse 31 onwards. (Proverbs always repays reading.) Chapter 16 verse 3 says: ‘Commit to the Lord whatever you do, and your plans will succeed.’
It is important to plan. We all do, we all must. But it makes a big difference to commit our plans to God, before, during and after we make them.
God is not surprised by the pandemic. In the midst of disaster for Israel he promised them ‘I know the plans I have for you, for good and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.’ We find this in Jeremiah 29:11, and it is for us too.
Paul tells us in Romans, ‘Do not be conformed any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will.’ Let us renew our minds daily with God’s pattern of faith and hope and love. We will find his will in our daily lives.
And again, in Ephesians, chapter 2 verse 10: ‘For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.’ So God’s plans include things for us to do, whatever our stage in life, as individuals and as a church. They will open up for us as we keep our eyes open for them. It is fun to be watching out for them. They may be different from what we expected!
 
Our bigger plans will have to wait, but they are not gone. For the future …’we wait for it with patience.’
 
 
Lynne Clarke ,
Locum minister, Holy Trinity Lara with Christ Church Little River.