The perfect year

This is the season when the school year stretches before you, clean and promising, like a fresh spiral notebook, or a box of flawless, sharpened pencils. The lesson plans feel like the answer to all the niggling worries about learning gaps and keeping up with that perfect family at co-op. The extracurriculars are all perfectly lined up, in balance, and designed to facilitate the kind of “well-rounded experience” that everyone wants for their children. And you’re totally caught up on laundry, which is a sign. This is going to be the perfect year.

And it will be. I can promise you that.

For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.–Ephesians 2:10

See that? That’s your guarantee of a perfect year right there. God prepared it for you, in advance, and created you to walk forward in His glory.

One problem: your plans? They might not be for His glory.

I have a lot of experience in this area, so lean close. I am very, very good at praying hard over my intentions. I am equally good at lining them all up, and telling the Lord just how hard I am going to work on His behalf, bringing His name constantly to the ears of my children and everyone else I chance to meet as I go about these great works I have in mind.

What I’m not so good at is remembering that the things that derail my carefully planned days are, in truth, the actual works God has prepared.

The car that won’t start, the unexpected positive pregnancy test, the job offer that vanishes, the child who suddenly takes up swearing, the fire that leaves you homeless? All allowed by God, all designed for us to press through in His strength, reflecting His glory to the world.

Which brings me back to your perfect year, and all the boxes you’re waiting to check. Don’t forget: God has his own to-do list lined up for the year. And it trumps ours, every time.

You’re not a failure when May comes and you’re only 3/4 of the way through the math book because you’ve invested hours every week walking a child through a heartwrenching spiritual issue instead of laboring over calculating the angle of a triangle. You didn’t flake out when you set aside Lego Club to make a weekly date to take a meal to a family left reeling by the sudden loss of their father.

God knew. He prepared the good work in advance, and you walked in it.

Things will happen this year. Good thing, bad things. Things you’ve planned, and things that catch you so totally off guard that you’ll feel as if the wind was knocked out of you. And yet … God is not surprised. He created you, as it turns out, for a time such as this (Esther 4:14). So plan. Look forward. Get excited. And hold it all with open hands. Because His purpose for you is waiting to be played out this year and yes, you have a Savior big enough to carry you through it all.