“I know what I'm doing.
I have it all planned out—plans to take care of you, not abandon you, plans to
give you the future you hope for. When you call on me, when you come and pray
to me, I'll listen.” Jeremiah 29:11, 12
(Message)
One of the most famous stories in
California history is that of the Donner Party.
You know them, right? The 87
people who trekked from the East in 1846 to come and pursue fame and fortune in
California? Fame and fortune they found,
but not quite the way they had planned:
along the way, fights broke out among the group, some died of disease,
one man was murdered on the trail, and they ended up stuck in the Sierra Nevada
mountains in the worst blizzard ever known in California up to that time. Some in the group resorted to cannibalism
because of a desperate lack of food.
Essentially, these were not very nice people—not the kind of people
you’d want to have over for dinner. (OK,
sorry for the pun. I know it’s in bad
taste.) One of the big reasons the
Donner Party ended up in the predicament they did was because they had trusted
a man, Lansford Hastings, to guide them from Missouri to California. Hastings had written a guidebook and promised
to lead the group personally, but the “shortcut” in the book was little more
than speculation, and Hastings left Missouri before ever meeting the
Donners. In effect, he wasn’t much of a
guide, and people died as a result. It’s
one of the sadder tales of American history, one that could be subtitled “The
Guide Who Didn’t Lead.”
Thank God we can trust Jesus to be our
Guide! God Himself said in Jeremiah
29:11-12 that He has plans for us, plans to take care of us, plans to give us
hope and a future; when we call on Him and pray to Him, He promises to
listen—He will never abandon us. The
road may be hard—no one promised the Donners an easy path, and God doesn’t
promise us one, either—but our Lord tells us that He knows the way. Keep in mind one of Jesus’s most oft-used phrases: “Follow Me.”
Jesus never tells His disciples, “Hey, guys—go do A, B, and C, and I’ll
sit here and eat Cheetos until you get back.”
No, he always starts by calling us to follow Him; then he tells us to
watch what He does and to emulate him; throughout the Gospels, Jesus leads
through example.
Knowing that God has the best in mind for
us—even if it isn’t always easy—gives me assurance that the One I’m following
is straight as an arrow and won’t mislead me.
We’ve become cynical because of all the Lansford Hastingses we’ve seen
in the world, but we have thousands of years of consistent track record with
God: we can trust Him with our future
and know for certain that His guidance will lead us home.
B.P.
Think about it: Am I trusting God with my future? Do I have
backup plans just in case His don’t work out?
No comments:
Post a Comment