I found this great quote on Matt Kelland’s Unhack Your Brain Substack and I love it, but then on Sunday at our Messy Church Easter service we sang Our God Is A Great Big God which I also love.
I just love to be reminded that God is sooo soooo big but also that God has loved me since before the world began, since before I was born, since before I made all the mistakes and screw ups I did and all the hurting of others that I did too. God loved me inspite of what I was going to do. Now that is amazing.
But then it came down to how to I balance this line “how wonderful to be a part of God’s amazing plan” with it being ok not to have “a purpose or grand ambition” and to just “wander through life finding interesting things to do“.
I know I’ve pondered this whole “God’s plan for your life” before in other posts but again I was struck with the revelation that, even though way too often, especially in charismatic denominations, there is this emphasis on “finding God’s plan for your life”, of praying into every move you make to check it is “part of the plan” and lots of angsting and fears about “getting it wrong” or “missing out”.
But what if …. and as Matt calls it an “unpopular opinion”… what if God’s plan for our lives is to find interesting things to do before we die?
The world is crawling with interesting things and interesting people. This morning an older couple and I stood in wonder at the confetti blossom falling from the trees; in the park I noticed a lady sniffing the apple blossoms; I talked with an man about how he’s dealing with his terminal cancer; with another friend about how the family are dealing with the sudden heart attack of her father-in-law; I laugh at squirrels scampering up trees and the puppy who leaps up the tree trunks trying to catch them; I smile at connections to do with The Green Cross Code man [a UK road crossing initiative back in the 1970s]. And all this is just in the 45 mins to and from the park today. That’s even before I’ve started reading the amazing Substack and WordPress blogs that appear in my inbox, before I start reading the piles of books I have, etc.
The world is so amazing and if God’s purpose for my life, God’s amazing plan for my life, is to potter along and enjoy those interesting things then I think that is totally amazing.
Yes also I know that God’s plan includes loving God, ourselves and others, and forgiving God, ourselves and others, which again if you get into that is amazingly interesting.
I think once we can do the finding interesting things everywhere, can forgive God, ourselves and others and can love God, ourselves and others, then I think we have definitely got the most amazing grand plan ever.
Aspirational Adventures 