This morning I was thinking about a decision I made which had some dire immediate consequences, leading to the closure of the church I was pastoring.  It was the right choice but it caused much pain for me and many of the people I care most about.  Looking back,  my decision probably wasn’t what caused the pain; it simply changed the timing of the heartache, it allowed it to come sooner rather than later.  And now that I am finding my way out of those difficult times, I am beginning to see a goodness in the timing, maybe even a reason for the timing.

I recently heard that God reveals his will to us in segments.  That rings true.  We tend to know no more of God’s plans for us than our next few steps, or maybe no more than a general direction our next step should take.  What we can know, though, is the character our actions should have no matter where we are headed or what our destination: love, forgive, be generous and full of grace.  When God reveals destinations to us, they are generally, if not always, near and soon.

So if there is a great plan for our lives, it seems inaccessible to us.  As much as we would like God to reveal the big picture, the full plot, the completed fabric of our lives, we don’t experience it.

But our failure to experience it doesn’t keep us from positing that it exists.  We imagine that it is there in the mind of God.  And for some reason, inexplicable to each of us, God never reveals it to us.  We believe this; we want, sometimes desperately, to believe this.  Why do we believe this when we only have the evidence of the segments?

If we can place on hold the belief that God has always had plan for our lives, then we can ask an important question.  Is there any evidence that God’s good plan for our lives isn’t becoming a plan even as it is being revealed to us?  Might it be possible that God is a excellent impromptu actor who is working out good for our lives, only without a script?

Most of us don’t feel comfortable and secure when we don’t have a plan to execute or when we are required to make up a plan as we go.  We like to know the destination first so that we can plan the direction we need to head and the route we need to take.  We like plans and maps and blueprints.

Is God like us in this way?

I am tending to give less and less credence to that possibility.  I am trusting more and more that the name God reveals to Moses at the burning bush is actually a revelation of the nature of God, a nature which is significantly different from our human nature.  “I am becoming who I am becoming,” is the name the Lord gives to Moses as God’s identity (Exodus 3:14).  If God is becoming who God is becoming then it stands to reason that God’s plans are becoming what God’s plans are becoming.  (See the related post, “Given Until Proven Intended.”)

This seems to me to be the simplest explanation of our experience that God reveals his will to us in segments:  God’s plans, like their revelations, are created in segments.

If this is true then we are left to trust simply in the goodness of God, and in God’s impromptu acting ability.  We can look for those times when God is working good in our lives, those segments which happen in ways we never would have planned.  And instead of wondering how this segment fits into a grand plan, we simply give thanks and praise God.  And we are encouraged to trust in the Lord, and to not lean on our own understanding.  (Proverbs 3:5)