I opened my calendar…

Yesterday was the first day I’ve opened my calendar since all of this. Looking back over the past two weeks I didn’t realize all the things that have been canceled. As I looked over the days I began to feel a little sad about the things we missed. I’m not saying I haven’t enjoyed time off and time away and the slowness of our schedule, but the days have just gone by and I didn’t realize it. What caught me more off guard was the feeling I felt looking at my calendar. I didn’t really expect to feel sad for missing some of the things. Then I began to look at the weeks coming and I thought about the possibility of us missing those things too. None of them are super life-changing events but some are things we have been looking forward to as a family. It’s funny how when change happens grief comes with it. I think that’s normal in a situation like this. When our lives have been totally changed for reasons that don’t quite make sense to us. But then this morning in my time with the Lord I read 1 Corinthians 2:9 where it says,

If I’m going to be honest with you I struggle with this thought process. Not because I haven’t seen the faithfulness and the goodness of the Lord all throughout my life, but in situations like this I have a hard time pulling myself to the light. That’s the cool thing about the light is it always shines through. There is never a moment where darkness will overtake the light. There is never a moment where we can forget that in the midst of chaos and in the midst of what seems like destruction, God will always make a way. God has more things planned for me and my family than my calendar could ever comprehend. God has more things planned for my church than we can even wrap our minds around. God has more things planned for our community than we can imagine. So we have to let the light in. We have to trust and rest in the God who has more things planned for us than we can ever imagine. Even when it’s hard for us to believe this truth our prayer has to be “Lord help my unbelief.” Even though there will probably be more things from our schedules and our calendars that are canceled in the future, we have to rest and trust in the God who knew all of this was coming. We have to trust and rest in the fact that he has more plans for us than those schedules would have ever allowed. Proverbs 19:21 says, “Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand.” The purposes of the Lord are standing right now. His timing is something we will never understand on this side of Heaven. In this season of change and what seems like us missing out on things, let’s rest in the Master Planner who holds all things together. Let’s continually remind ourselves there is purpose and hope in all of this.