Different Plans

 

August 28, 2020

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not to your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct your paths.” —Proverbs 3:5-6

One of the first Bible passages I learned as a new Christian was this from Proverbs. This was a lifetime ago, and when something has been with one that long, it’s easy to rattle it off without thinking of its import. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve schemed and plotted my path, only later on to perfunctorily ask God to bless my plans. This time, it was different. When my phone died on the way to Rochester Tuesday, my normal response would have been to buy another one right away. The only thing preventing me from doing just that was the price of even an older generation iPhone. I choke on the tag. And I did offer the matter up in prayer.

I made an appointment with Apple to see if the phone is fixable, but can’t get in for another week. I went to our phone provider and got the pricing for a new one exactly like mine. It wasn’t bad, but then I remembered my old phone with the screen that cracked when it fell out of my pocket coming home from a preaching assignment on my bike. That was all of five years ago, and I still had it in a drawer. It worked, so I called my son Matt to ask if he could swap out the screens. Two different models, same size screen. Jeanine googled it; it sounded like a go, but when we took them apart, the connections inside were different. 

I was resigned to shelling out the bucks for a new phone when Matt said, “Don’t we have an old iPhone 6 lying around?” They had been given one of the new models, so everyone in the house upgraded. It was just like when as a kid I ended up in my brother’s outgrown clothes, except I was now at the bottom of the food chain. I am quite content to be there; its taken a little work to get everything transferred over, but except for text messages, it’s mostly done. 

My understanding took me in one direction, but God had other plans. On top of it all, the electric is finally back on full power and all of our appliances are humming along just fine. It’s been a good, but different day. A half hour’s rest in the MRI machine, lunch with my wife during which we received a Facetime call from granddaughter Alex, a phone fix from my son, working appliances, and topping it all off, a visit from Jo and Mattie, who kept us laughing as they ate all my molasses cookies.