Canada Ottawa Sentry Park 31076rd.
For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future – Jeremiah 29:11 (NIV)
Before I learned how to drive, I would sit in a car with full confidence in the driver, believing that they knew what they do. Once I started driving, it was another story. I trusted no one to drive me. I worried about how they push on the brake or use the crutch and questioned why they do things this way and not that way. I realized that this is true for most drivers! They do not trust each other. When I lived in South Africa, one day I was with a colleague from work driving through the busy streets of Johannesburg during pick hour. There can be a hell of a traffic jam in Johannesburg, so everyone at pick hours tries to find the slightest opening to advance. I was driving already at a tortoise speed, then suddenly I stopped altogether before crossing the street, yet the traffic light was green for me. My colleague turned to me with a hint of annoyance in his voice and said, “go, the light is green, why have you stopped?” I told him that if I had crossed, I would have blocked other street traffic since the car that I followed had already stopped on the other side of the road after crossing, it was not moving because of the heavy traffic. I would have stopped in the middle of the road, causing even greater traffic for cars going in both directions. When I explained to him, he said, “Oh sorry, I had not even noticed, but because you are driving, you paid attention.”
One of the reasons people worry, if not the only one, is not to be in control of their lives, not being able to know their future. Where am I heading? What will my life look like in the next few years? What will happen to my children? But God says, “I know the plans I have for you, I know where I am taking you, to a good destination, to a bright future.” God is the one who is driving us through the streets of life towards our future and our divine destination. Unfortunately, we think we know everything about life that we want to dispute the steering wheel from Jesus. We think that he is taking the long road, whereas we know very well that there is a shortcut; things are going slow, whereas he should be driving faster. Things are not happening as they should, so we give God some good advice. However, like my colleague above, we don’t have the full picture of things like the driver has. He has a broad picture of eternity while we are only looking at the present. Without God directing our steps, we would reach nowhere, we would be running in circles around the same place, we would find ourselves at dead ends, or we would take the wrong turns and be forever lost.
My mom used to tell us that she was at ease when our dad was driving. This is because of the trust she had in the one driving her. She knew he was an experienced driver who would never put his family in danger. I never heard her telling my father that he should have taken this street or stopped here or slowed down or anything of the like. She was well aware that she knew little, so she had nothing to add and just trusted him. Isn’t it time we start applying that kind of blind trust when it comes to our relationship with our heavenly Father? To relax and enjoy the ride of life, knowing that we have the best driver in the Universe? The end of the year is when most people sit to assess their achievements and plan for the following year. As we begin a new year, let us resolve to have blind trust in God. Trust that he will make it happen, that he plans to give us hope and a future. If you are like me, sometimes you wished things had turned differently, but here we are at the end of the year, though things did not go the way we wanted, we can still testify that God was faithful all along. There is a song we liked to sing long ago that says, “I don’t know what my future holds, but I know who holds my future.” May the words of that chorus become alive for you, and the thought of Jesus holding your future take away all the worries and anxieties for the coming year. My wish for you is that your trust in God grows to another level and that you live in anticipation of better days ahead.