“If the Lord Wills It” by Colleen O’Sullivan

“If the Lord Wills It” by Colleen O’Sullivan

Wednesday in the Seventh Week of Ordinary Time

Beloved: Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we shall go into such and such a town, spend a year there doing business, and make a profit"– you have no idea what your life will be like tomorrow. You are a puff of smoke that appears briefly and then disappears. Instead, you should say, "If the Lord wills it, we shall live to do this or that." (James 4:13-15)

Piety

For I know well the plans I have in mind for you—oracle of the LORD—plans for your welfare and not for woe, so as to give you a future of hope. (Jeremiah 29:11)

Study

When I first began to consider retiring, I didn’t have any definite plan for what I was going to do. I pictured myself never setting the alarm clock again. I imagined I would have the long-awaited opportunity to read all the books that had lured me into buying them, only to end up sitting on a bookshelf waiting “till I had the time.”  But God had a different plan for me. In my wildest dreams, I didn’t think that a year later I would be working harder than I’ve ever worked in my life or that I would find myself with less time to read for pleasure than ever before. Nor did I think I would hop out of bed at 6:00 am five days a week. But God’s plan has turned out better than anything I could have dreamed up. God gave me the gift of a wonderful infant great-nephew and the time to be his full-time caregiver for the first year of his life. I never knew you could have so much love in your heart for a child. It’s been truly awesome watching this tiny human being grow and develop. My niece thinks I’ve helped her out, but she has no idea what a wonderful gift to me this year has been. There’s nothing like starting out your day with the big grin my little great-nephew puts on his face when his mom brings him in through my front door each morning. Yes, God’s plan was much better than my few scattered ideas about what to do with my time.

The last year has been a happy surprise for me, but sometimes God’s plan leads us down paths we would rather not go. That is apparent when we see Jesus pray in the garden of Gethsemane. He struggled with what was looking like God’s plan for him, but he when he rose to his feet, Jesus had set aside his own desires and accepted his Father’s will, not an easy thing to do at all.

We can make all the plans we want without consulting God in prayer. We can ignore the voice in our hearts calling us to go a different way from what we envisioned. We can kick and fight in an attempt to have it our way, but ultimately God is running the show. God has a plan for each of us that fits into the overall plan God has for all of creation.

The apostle James doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t take our heart’s desires seriously, because our deepest desires are often what God wants for us. He also doesn’t mean we shouldn’t make plans. I think James is saying, don’t be arrogant. Don’t act like you’re the god of your own little universe. Consult with God in prayer before starting out on a new path, because we all want our lives to be in accord with God’s will. Trust that God’s plans are for our welfare as stated in the Book of the prophet Jeremiah.

Action

Try looking back at the time when you finished school or pick any 5- or 10-year period of your life. What were your plans? Where did God actually lead you, if you ending up taking a path different from what you envisioned? 

It takes a great deal of trust in God to be open to God’s desires for us. If you have time, listen to Trust in You sung by Lauren Daigle and co-written by Daigle, Paul Mabury, and Michael Farren.