New Planner

I just bought myself a new July 2011-June 2012 weekly/monthly planner! Flipping through the blank teal-and-lime-paisley-bordered pages makes me curious what the next school year will hold. . . . I’m hoping it will include the completion of my Master’s degree and elementary teacher’s certification . . . many special times with family and friends . . . and a deepening trust and joy in Christ.

Whenever I look at the empty pages of a new planner, I can’t help but wonder all that God has in store for me and pray that I will be faithful to walk in it (see Ephesians 2:10). As I contemplate the plans that I’m already starting to write in these pages, I’m reminded that God knows the good and perfect plans He has for me (see Jeremiah 29:11 and Romans 12:2). Plans that likely will differ from mine: “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love Him” (I Corinthians 2:9). 

Moreover, when I consider the lives of many great men and women throughout history, I’m awed to think how appointments with destiny are often unexpected and camouflaged. . . . I’m pretty sure that a blinding roadside encounter wasn’t written anywhere in Saul’s Daytimer. . . . I doubt that any of Esther’s personal long-range goals included risking her neck to rescue her people from annihilation. . . .  I know Corrie tenBoom had no desire to be sentenced to a Nazi concentration camp . . . .  More often than not, divine calling is realized in the inconvenient or adverse—that is, exactly what I would not devise for myself. Come what may, I must claim His Word versus insisting on my agenda. Whatever plans I make this year must be yielded to Him, confident that He who has begun a good work in me is faithful to complete it (Philippians 1:6).

As I start using my new planner for 2011-2012, here’s the plan: His Word above my way.