Some days I feel like that’s so true. No matter what I do to make something turn out the way I hope it will, ultimately my plans are foiled. It seems like lately I’ve been learning that no matter how hard I try, it’s not enough. Or at least it doesn’t seem to be enough. Isn’t that what God wants though? His purpose is important but He’s primarily interested in the journey – how I get there. I won’t ever know the destination, but it’s how I get there that causes me to grow. So, lately I’ve been learning a lot about trust. The last few days have been especially difficult. Not so much difficult to believe that God has a purpose and that He’s got it all covered, but I struggle with thinking about things too much. I have a tendency to run things over and over and over in my head. It drives me nuts! I think it’s called worry. This is especially true when I feel like I’ve hurt someone or been misunderstood in my intentions. In my heart I know that this is in God’s hands, too, and it’s not a surprise. But it’s really hard to turn off my brain. I’m learning to trust Him with financial issues more than ever. Sometimes it seems counter-intuitive, that when we have so little and when we don’t know when more will come, it’s then that I want to give the most and when I realize how much God is in control (and how little control I have). I begin to see that living now and trusting God for then is a part of the process. Skip made an interesting point on an mp3 I listened to – that no matter what way I turn, the future is always behind me (I can’t see the back of my head) – think of the rowboat analogy (we’re rowing in a river of time, but to row forward we have to face backwards). The main thing I struggle with here, is how do I know I’ve aligned myself properly with what God’s done in the past, so that I am headed in the right direction? In Hebrew it’s about the movement, and even waiting is an active verb. So my question is, if I’m supposed to keep moving while I wait, how do I do that? When God called Abraham out of Ur, He didn’t give him directions to the next stop. He told him to go to a place “I will show you.” So did Abraham just pick a random direction and start walking? That’s the implication. But how does faith like that translate into my life today? What if I’m walking in the total wrong direction to get wherever God wants me to go? Or maybe, it’s not so much that God has a physical destination in mind. Maybe no matter what direction I go He is there and will use the journey and the wandering to make me more like Him. Maybe God didn’t have a final destination for Abraham. Maybe it was all about the fact that Abraham went. And in going, God was able to mold Him character. Anyway, that was a rather long bit of rambling. Such have been my thoughts lately – disorganized and a bit of a shambles. Perhaps tomorrow will be better. Until then I will walk in the path I am on and trust that if I come to a dead end sign, there’s another path branching off that I will be following next. Blessings and peace!