Yielding Our Plans To His Purposes

“The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry” said Robert Burns in his poem To A Mouse.

Burns penned the words back in 1785 as an apology to a mouse after he destroyed its nest with a plough one autumn.  The damage was unintentional; nonetheless, his heart broke for the little mouse.  After planning and working so diligently to assemble a home for the upcoming winter, the blade of a plough suddenly shattered its best-laid plans.

The reality that life doesn’t always go as we plan is nothing new.  Burns knew it hundreds of years ago and Solomon declared it thousands of years earlier in Proverbs 19:21.

“Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand.”

Despite knowing this, I have far too often found myself expecting the days to go my way and ended up feeling inconvenienced at best or hurt at worst when the Lord’s purposes superseded my plans.

But recently, I came across a quote that has challenged how I plan.

“Write your plans in pencil and give God the eraser.”

Notice it doesn’t say stop planning. No, plans in and of themselves are not the problem. They can help us stay focused, motivated, and excited over what’s to come.

But as we plan, we must learn to do so with hands willing to trade our permanent ink for erasable pencil and hearts ready to surrender the eraser to the sovereign hand of God.

Sometimes God orders circumstances in our lives differently than we would like to teach us and grow us in ways that would not be possible if everything went our way. We may feel disappointed when our best-laid plans go awry and when we do, it’s important to be real with God and acknowledge our hurt. But we must remember that God doesn’t erase our plans to be cruel. He does so because he has a greater purpose for us even if we can’t see it in the moment.

Long ago, he promised the exiles in Babylon this:

“For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.” (Jeremiah 29:11-13)

His intentions remain the same for us today which makes this a promise worth keeping in mind as we yield our plans to his purposes.