We plan, God laughs

Someone once said, If you want to God make laugh then show Him your plans.

This quote provocatively restates a universal truth, enshrined in sayings such as “Man proposes, God disposes.” We all have dreams and we make plans accordingly. We envision our life going along a smooth line leading to destination happiness, with happiness being equated with the fulfillment of our dreams. However, life rarely goes the way we plan – factors beyond our control disrupt things. If we ascribe those disruptive factors beyond our control ultimately to the supreme divinity, then we could say that God has disposed the plans we had proposed.

But does God really laugh when we make plans? Is he a sadist who delights in disrupting our plans? Certainly not. The point of God’s laughter is subtle and non-literal. To appreciate that point, we need to understand that our perspective is very limited – so limited in fact that our plans often involve such a huge degree of presumption that it makes those in the knowledge of things laugh indulgently. Suppose a small girl plans to build a sand castle and tells her parents that her dream prince will come on in shining armor on a white horse and live with her in that castle. The parents laugh not sadistically, but indulgently, at the child’s grandiose imagination associated with the sand castle.

Similarly, when we make our plans in this temporary material world where everything is swept away by the tides of time, even our best-laid plans can be seen to be not much different from the child’s fantasies about a sand castle. Seeing the grandiosity of our plans, God laughs – not sadistically, but indulgently.

We all have plans. With each stage of life, we imagined who we would be when we “arrived.” But when we got there, things were not quite in place. Life did not turn out like we expected. In fact, at times life seemed to take another direction entirely. For a lot of us, it felt like we failed. We did not measure up. We are not who we thought we would be. Life is not turning out like we expected.

God will interrupt your plans. He doesn’t care how much investment you have put in, your class in society, how much time or resources spent in your planning… 

When I got enough confidence,

The stage was gone.

When I was sure of losing,

I won.

When I needed people the most,

They left me.

When I learnt to dry my tears,

I found a shoulder to cry on.

When I mastered the skill of hating,

Somebody started loving me.

When after waiting for dawn, I fell asleep,

The sun came out.

William Shakespeare might have thought that, that’s life; I say, that’s God!

Make God part of your plans.

 

Proverbs 19:21

21 Many are the plans in a persons heart, but it’s the Lord’s purpose that prevails.