When God Laughs

 

 

Scripture

Proverbs  16:9

 The human mind plans the way,
    but the Lord directs the steps.  (NRSV)

Devotion

 Perhaps you have heard some version of the phrase, "Humans plan, and God laughs."  This is an old saying referring to all our carefully laid plans and the unpredictability of life itself has been coming to mind for me a lot over the past few days.  It rang through my head on Monday when a representative from the American Red Cross called in hopes that our church could loan them our Fellowship Hall for a Tuesday blood drive after their original location was forced to cancel.  I had planned to spend a quiet day on research, worship planning, and report-writing.  God chuckled and set me to dashing off emails to Session, making phone calls, and helping my COVID Task Force move tables and chairs.

The phrase traveled down the phone line of a conference call last night when people who had agreed to delay a large indoor Martin Luther King Day celebration until late February  decided that n pajamas watch footage of King's speeches online from the comfort of my own home...possibly while still in pajamas.   God guffawed and tasked me with offering a 9 AM prayer to kick off an outdoor Day of Empowerment in which people can learn about different resources to help them get through the continued pandemic.  If everything falls into place, there will even be a vaccination clinic.

And that phrase is coming to mind again concerning worship this coming Sunday morning.  I have carefully planned an in-person service to ordain and install new ruling elders to the Session.  I even worked together with our music director to pick instrumental pieces that should be the perfect fit for both the scripture reading and the ordination.  But I swear, I detect echoes of a far-off chuckle as the weather reports keep saying that freezing-rain-and-snow event is more and more likely to arrive in the early hours of that very morning.  Yet another set of plans may be about to change.

We plan.  God laughs.  Then what do we do?

Rather than getting frustrated and shaking our fists at the sky, we should probably step back and ask ourselves how God's direction is better than the way we were originally headed.  Yes, I could have used some quiet time for research on Monday, but how much better is it to help fulfill God's plans to save lives through the precious gift of blood?  And what an amazing thing it says about my congregation that the American Red Cross felt they could call us in their hour of need!  Yes, I may feel taken aback to be helping scramble to come up with a new MLK Day plan, but what a tangible blessing that Day of Empowerment will be for our community.  And yes, I may chafe at the potential need to replace my plans for Sunday's in-person service with an online-only one should the weather turn foul...but perhaps there is a reason for that.  Perhaps God is keeping us safe from something that would have occured during an in-person service or planning on providing us with an unexpected blessing that I can't see yet.

The fact is that God's plans--which are often so very different from our own--are always for our good. And while God may laugh, that laughter is never cruel.  Instead, it is the good-natured chuckle of someone who is amused by a tourist's travel plans.  Yes, the visitor used all kinds of roadmaps, timetables, and brochures to create their itinerary, but the seasoned local knows that there are better ways to get where we are headed...and that are a dozen better places to go to in the first place.  And so God chuckles, help us set aside our carefully made plans, and directs our steps along a better path. 

As we head down whatever path God directs us to, we get to choose how we react to this change in plans.  Will we rail against God and everyone else?  Will we cling to our own wisdom and seek ways to get our original plans back on track?   Or will we accept that God knows best and trust that this new direction is the right one?  I hope we choose trust and acceptance as often as we can...because the fact of the matter is that God's plans will always win out.  If we can learn to react to God's laughter with a rueful grin and carry on in our new direction, we will probably be much happier people.

 

Prayer

 God, you know how attached I am to my own plans.  Help me trust in your wisdom when you direct my steps towards a different way.  May I have faith that your laughter is never at our expense and that your plans are always for our benefit.  In Jesus name, I pray, Amen.