"God's Perfect Plan for Your Life"

I've always had a contrary streak. Even after I became a Christian I didn't think much of this phrase. "Plan?" Does God have a minute by minute checklist? Does anything in the heavens above or the earth below or the waters under the earth care which shoe I put on first in the morning? Do I have to pray to ask whether I should go to work again today?

And if you admit the possibility that there can be a variety of freely chosen actions that are all perfectly acceptable in the plan, then the Plan begins to assume a very different form. Not a checklist or a schedule, but a form and a framework.

Perhaps you have a special calling: you must be a missionary; and perhaps you've been given a special message: "Come to Macedonia and help us." Perhaps you've been told to run alongside a chariot and eavesdrop. These tie in very nicely to the model of a Plan as a schedule. But what about deciding that you will work nights as a tent maker rather than ask for support? Paul testified that he had flexibility in carrying out his orders. For him the Plan was a set of objectives, and not a detailed daily list.

WWII Officer Candidates' School: The officer in charge of a bunch of candidates gave them a test. The question was how to raise a 20-foot flagpole. In the scenario they were given a block-and-tackle, a sergeant and six men and asked how to get it done. Each man came up with a set of diagrams, math formulas and various theories. The officer then said, "Gentlemen, you are all wrong. The correct procedure is to turn to the NCO and say, "Sergeant, get that flagpole up."

"Paul, get the gospel preached in Macedonia"

"The Best of All Possible Worlds" is the same confusion in a different form. Who said that universes had to be orderable in that kind of way? You can easily conceive of less-good universes, but also of classes of universes which are equally good.

Within that kind of flexibility, I suspect that it often doesn't even matter who you marry—within some general guidelines, of course. You don't need to be a prophet to predict that certain personalities are going to conflict more often than necessary...

Jesus' life seems to show this flexibility. I've heard the miracle at Cana taken to prove that Jesus was willing to modify his schedule to suit his mother, and that therefore we should ask her to twist his arm for us (never mind John 16:26-27). But look again. Over and over we read something like "He had compassion on them and..," and over and over He told the healed to not tell anyone about what He'd done. If that isn't showing flexibility in the schedule, it sure looks like it.

Of course He didn't lose sight of the main objective. And we (OK, I) have a tendency to be flexible in the direction of maximum personal comfort, which doesn't follow Jesus' example very closely.