Following the Road Map

I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man's heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. (Ecclesiates 3:10,11 ESV)

Lately I've been feeling a little directionless. It's not that I don't have things I need to do, and things to keep me busy, just that I don't have a clear picture of where it's all leading me. I know what my main job is: guiding the youngest son into adulthood and providing as secure a home as I can for him.

I wish I had some sort of bigger picture--or maybe a road map--but I don't. I've been buffeted by circumstances, and maybe I'm at a lull now, and maybe I'm not, but since there's no accurate weather forecast, I just don't know. I don't particularly like things that way.

I'm not the spontaneous sort. I pay attention to the weather report, and plan what I'll be wearing a day ahead of time. I write lists of things to do, and persistantly work my way through them. I like feeling like I'm on top of things.

If you've lived long enough, you know that the feeling that we're on top of things is always an illusion, and we're just one unforeseen circumstance away from disruption. That's why I've adopted these two verses from Ecclesiates as my own. Until I feel the need to change them, these are my life's verses. They remind me that every buffet is a beautiful buffet given at God's hand to give me direction--his direction.

There is a plan, a map, a list, and it's more perfectly directional that I can imagine, having eternity as it's scope. But I can't know it. I can only trust it, and do what it demands of me.