Midst the struggle you wonder about the plans God has for you. I thought it was all about prosperity, but this is far from that.
Some things don’t make sense.
It wasn’t meant to be like this. I didn’t see this as my future. How did I get here?
Questions and ponderings flow through the brain, and we wonder if God is there at all.
People say things that feel like grains of sand being rubbed into an open wound.
- You need more faith
- Pray more
- Give more
- God intends for you to prosper
- Try harder
- You’ve got sin in your life
- You need to forgive
- God has plans for you
You wonder about the end product. Where is all this going?
Can anything good come out of this mess I am in?
You try to work it all out, but it’s all a bit of a puzzle. A jig-saw puzzle.
Jig-Saw puzzle
I think when I’m 94, if I make it to that age, I might be able to see how a few pieces have fitted together and something Godly good has emerged.
At this moment, I still wonder how. It’s a mystery.
I think it’s a bit like being given a 10000 piece jigsaw puzzle without the accompanying picture of what the puzzle will look like. Mountain scene, tropical birds, an old house. You have no idea.
To complicate it even further, there are no straight edged pieces. This puzzle could seemingly go on forever. No easy parts for you to make a quick start with nice neat borders.
So you make a start and find a few pieces that connect. This one fits in here and maybe this one will go here.
You notice that a lot of the pieces look the same. In fact, it looks like this complete puzzle has only slight shade differences to it. There is a lot of sky!
I thought this life was meant to be easy. No complications. Straightforward and simple, yet it’s more like a vast blue sky puzzle.
Did you ever think that mystery was in the plans God has for you?
Held in someone’s thoughts
I often receive requests for prayer. (email me at barry@turningthepage.co.nz if you want)
There is pain, loss, and desperation.
First, I believe, they want God to act in certain ways. But I also think there is a deep, probably unconscious, need to feel that someone else knows the struggle.
That they are being held in someone’s thoughts.
They want to be held, known and loved by at least one other person. Being alone and completely abandoned is the worst of crimes we can do to each other.
I hold people in my thoughts during the day. Prayers form around Spirit nudges for this person and that person.
Their puzzle is jig-saw messy, like mine.
Then someone quotes Jeremiah 29:11, and especially the translation that has the word ‘prosper’.
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
At this point, I understand why Jesus got angry and picked up a whip.
Bitterly cold comfort to someone dying from cancer, or having had their house burn to ashes.
We hear the word ‘plan’ and we think blueprint, map, already laid out for us.
We hear the word ‘prosper’ and we go to what the world considers as prosperity – the good life of health, wealth, beautiful people, and anything advertised to us as what will bring us personal fulfillment.
Yet here we are, like Job, sitting in an ash heap picking at our sores.
Quite frankly, I wish some people would just shut up and keep their band-aid clap trap verses for their own happy face mask wearing friends.
In the original Hebrew, this verse would most likely be read in this way.
For I know the thoughts that I think towards you says Yahweh thoughts of peace and not of evil to give you a future and a hope Jeremiah 29:11
Thoughts.
Thoughts that God thinks towards us.
Thoughts of peace, a future, a hope.
Reality hits that we are not there yet.
We, like the people of Israel that this verse was originally intended for, are in exile from the home always intended for us.
Forsaken
There are some words, that we may know from hearing them so often because people have said them to us as little mantras.
Forsaken, I believe, could be one of those words.
He will never leave you nor forsake you. Deuteronomy 31:6
Forsaken means to be remote, absent, depart from.
In God’s thoughts, you always held, loved, known, even though you may feel in exile and in a strange land.
God is on the move with thoughts and intentions to bring you to jig-saw puzzle completion with no pieces missing or in the wrong place.
Jig-saw pieces move and clip together. Sometimes awkwardly, sometimes with ease. We look at our life and see how God’s thoughts have been shaping the puzzle.
Amid the pain of the present day, we know we are held, loved and known.
Perhaps you have to change your thinking about the plans God has for you.
Quotes to consider
- The moment God is figured out with nice neat lines and definitions, we are no longer dealing with God. Rob Bell
- When you stand before Me [God] in mystery, you will eventually rest within Me in trust. When you can’t figure Me out, you will give up the illusion of predictability and control and discover the joy of freedom and hope. Larry Crabb 66 Love letters – Job
- Control eventually gives way to mystery and the letting go of control. Suddenly, we are not in charge. Rohr, Richard . The Wisdom Pattern: Order, Chaos, Reorder
- Real silence, real stillness, really holding one’s tongue comes only as the sober consequence of spiritual stillness. Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Questions to answer
- When you hear the words ‘I have thoughts towards you’ what is your first reaction? Why that reaction?
- A jig-saw puzzle unfolds itself as the pieces come together. Have you seen this happen in your life?
- What does prosperity look like to you? How is it portyaed to you through modern media? What do you think Gods view of being propserous looks like?
Further reading
Barry Pearman
Photo by Jonny Gios on Unsplash
