Proverbs 16:9 A man’s heart plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps.
James 4:13-17 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.
It is true that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. But it is also true that straight lines rarely exist in real life. More often than not, the plans we make involve many twists and turns that we had not planned on encountering. One measure of our trust in God is seen in how we navigate the unexpected changes in our plans.
Jonah had a plan—rather than obey God and head east to Nineveh, his plan was to go west to Tarshish (modern Spain) in order to avoid meeting his enemies face-to-face. But God’s original plan did not change. Instead, God changed Jonah’s plan by casting him into the sea and having him swallowed by a great fish. When faced with the likelihood of dying as fish food, Jonah repented of his disobedience and decided to submit to God’s original plan. Even then, Jonah’s story does not end well. He was not happy with God’s mercy toward Nineveh, and Scripture leaves him in a state of self-pity.
A valuable lesson from Jonah’s life is that God’s plans will not be foiled by human failure or intervention. If God changes your plans, seek His will and follow His lead. (Dr. Jeremiah)
