When I picked up an old towel this morning to polish a silver pendant, I stopped and stared. I bought those green jacquard towels in 1969, when I left to go to college. We will be selling our jewelry tomorrow at a fine craft show and I was finishing a new pendant style of sterling silver using our handmade glass beads. If anyone had predicted my 2006 life from my 1969 life, I would have cynically laughed it off. In 1969, at 17, I couldn’t imagine a life past 25. If I’d thought about it seriously, I would have said I expected to be dead by then.
And yet, I am, quite gloriously alive, 37 years later. Designing jewelry. Writing. And enjoying a sweet marriage.
We often imagine future scenarios, but we don’t usually assume the best, even as Christians. We know we’re supposed to trust God, but sometimes, he’s just so abstract. We fear the worst–our children will marry badly, our cancer will be terminal, we’ll get Alzheimer’s. But, since we cannot know the future, why not assume the best?
The towel this morning reminded me: I have no clue of what good plans God has. Drying my hair with that towel in 1969, I would never have predicted polishing my pendant with it in 2006! Nor do we know the good plans he has for us in the next years.
Father, you say, in Jeremiah 29:11, For I know what I have planned for you,’ says the Lord. ‘I have plans to prosper you, not to harm you. I have plans to give you a future filled with hope." (Net)
May we trust your good plans for us.