Today was a phenomenal day for me. I sing in my church choir, and we had our Christmas Lessons and Carols service this afternoon at 5:00. (Yes, it’s still Christmas, today being the eleventh day thereof.) Because of that, I had pretty much planned not to go to the regular morning service. However, about fifteen minutes before I would have to head out the door, I got the prompting that I really wanted to attend. So I went, and I’m so glad I did.
My priest (the Rev. Robert E. Stevens, Jr., www.stjohnsnh.org) delivered perhaps one of his best sermons this morning. I had hoped to include a link to the MP3 file on this post, but something happened to the recording and it is sadly not available. So my recollections will have to suffice. Of course, it’s how the sermon affected me that is the real story here, so this is not all bad, I suppose.
The gist of the sermon was summed up in the expression, “If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.” In other words, we can plan all we want, but “life” is going to come at us however it will. Father Rob had us imagine Mary and Joseph a year before Christ’s birth. He went on at great length describing how it would sound if Mary had told Joseph about her “plans” to have a child out of wedlock, to trek to Bethlehem on a donkey immediately prior to giving birth, to have to flee to Egypt to avoid Herod’s wrath, to return home on Herod’s death only to have to settle in Nazareth (a k a Podunk) because Herod’s son was on the throne, and on and on. “Isn’t that great, dear!” he imagined Mary saying to Joseph.
No, what happened to Mary and Joseph was anything but a pleasant tale we tell our children. It was real life, and it couldn’t possibly have been planned. Yet Mary’s response to the angel informing her that she would bear God’s child was essentially, “So be it. Your will be done.” Her submission led to perhaps The Greatest Story Ever Told … and also to much hardship and heartache.
I imagine that Mary’s real plans were to marry Joseph, raise a family, and be a good wife and mother. No doubt all of these came to pass, too. But her willingness to “go with the flow” led (according to Christian theology) to the salvation of the world.
So where does that leave us with our plans? This is a favorite time of year to make plans. Indeed, I am working through Jack Canfield’s Dream Big System, which includes bringing your dreams and goals out into the open and writing them down on paper (or pixels, as the case may be). I highly recommend it—and it’s cheap, compared to lots of other similar goal-setting programs I’ve participated in over the years.
But I’ve already had my own setbacks on the road to prosperity and abundance. Does that nullify my plans? Does that mean that I shouldn’t make any plans to begin with? I don’t believe so. It has been shown time and again that the people with written goals, solid plans, are much more likely to achieve success (however they define it) than those with no written goals or plans. We just need to be flexible, as unexpected roadblocks (and blessings) are sure to arise.
Perhaps my future is not likely to be nearly as topsy-turvy as Mary’s was—at least I hope not!—but I am using these first days of 2009 to map out what I want my life to look like in the months and years ahead. I invite you to do the same. Then we’ll sit back and watch the Universe bring whatever it will into our lives. I just know that a life with goals and the means to achieve them (i.e., plans) is the only type of life I wish to live.
Here’s to a 2009 with unprecedented prosperity to everyone who reads these words.
