When Plans Do Not Work Out ...

Tuesday, Feb 7, 2012. Yesterday I had a free day, which I planned to invest into science. I wanted to sit in my home office and work on some papers which should have been submitted already last year, there are just little things to correct. But then at 8:15 in the morning the school called and I had to pick up our youngest child, he was ill. So I was basically busy with taking care of our son for the next hours, with work chopped into little pices and scattered over the day.

It works - or it does not …

Sometimes, things do not work out. It can be caused by illness or by some accident. It can be caused by things which happen somewhere, but they affect my day. But of course things can also be caused by myself. I might have missed the train - since I just did not plan enough time to catch it. It might be that I failed because I did not train enough or exercise enough.

In my life, there were many things which worked out fine. As a nice example in my personal past, I remember my PhD and the research I did that time. I found new insight and got it published, with good recognition of the results and dozens of citations. Or last year, I organized three scientific events, two workshops and a symposium, and all went very well with a good crowd of international participants.

But there are other things which did not work out that well. Some were caused by myself, others by external influence. I have a huge pile of papers lying here, which are basically done, but not submitted. I have not been able to put that much time into some of the activities I am involved in as I would like to do, and they suffer from my failure.

God's viewpoint …

I ask myself: what is God's viewpoint on all this? Is he happy about things which worked and unhappy about the others? When things do not work out, is he involved in that? I have been going into prayer to find out and to get some advice about how to get things back onto track where they are not.

One of the insight from my prayer times is: God has a different viewpoint. He is not so dependent on my success or missing success. It is not his main focus. He wants me to have an open heart for his things, for his kingdom, for the people around me, for truth and faith.

But the insight is also: clean up where you can. That takes time and effort. But it is possible. It might not be possible to sort out things in days, which have been messed up by whole institutions over years. But there are possibilities which will turn up when they are needed. Move forward in truth and faithfulness. (Roland Potthast) ... more texts