Listen to advice and accept discipline,
    and at the end you will be counted among the wise.

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

The many plans we make are not always for our best. We travel along, sometimes staring out the window at the monotony of life passing us by and are mesmerized into complacency and routine. We believe what is may perhaps be all there is.

I have moments of indecision. I don’t mean indecision of the mind, but of the heart. No, not about love, I am certain of those parts of my life. But there is indecision about creations and taking the right step that tear at my heart. My mind does a good job with decisions and filing them away properly. It knows what to do, but the heart is the part that throws plans into chaos.

Fortunately a verse came to me today, a verse of the day, the one above. Those plans in my heart that tear at me? I need to learn to let them go. God knows the best plan. He even tells me the plan, I just don’t either always know the language/manner he’s speaking in, or am just not hearing it.

A great many things have happened in my life. One is about a young man I played football with. He was a star athlete, super intelligent. He had it all. Then one rainy game he tackled a player and with the wet uniforms, field and everything else, his neck broke.

The young man was a leader in many ways. People looked up to him. There was a bright future ahead for him. He was also a Christian.

Our team was losing badly, it was late in the game, and the other coach had asked our coach if he wanted to call the game and end it early. Our coach said no. It almost would appear that things were working against my friend from fulfilling his purpose for God and for life.

He has graduated from college, is now driving his own van, still paralyzed from the neck down, and travels to do speaking engagement to sports groups and FCA groups. That’s Fellowship of Christian Athletes. He doesn’t drive himself to those events, just wanted to make that clear. He’s my age and just recently was able to get a van and go through everything to be able to drive.

But God has a purpose and he uses indecision, and attempts to take away a bright and shining star to make them even brighter, IF that star chooses to move forward and upward with the purpose and the plan. My friend could have went through life in his wheelchair and no one would have said anything about it. But he had a support group, his parents, and all those who knew him to encourage and be God’s language in my friend’s ear.

I didn’t know where this was going when I first began writing. I thought it would be about my efforts to write novels. Then I put the scripture in. After that the part about my friend came to mind. He leads a more enriched life than most of us do and he is a benefit to more people than all but a handful of us will ever have the opportunity to. Well, that is unless we realize what the purpose for us is.