About twenty years ago I built a walkway to front of our house in Sherman. We had lived in that home for 15 years without a sidewalk to our front door. People would enter our house through the garage or the back door. Our house sat on a corner, and the driveway was on the side, so it was a long way to the front door. We wanted to put a paved, circular drive in out front, complete with a sidewalk to the door, but things kept getting in the way. Things like three sets of braces and college tuition and weddings and other obligations you have with three daughters. After years of putting things off and coming up with different ideas, I finally decided to build a walkway from the driveway on the side of the house over to the front porch: A “do-it-yourself” project. I sketched it all out and used a combination of an above ground deck or “board walk” and a path made out of landscape timbers, mulch and stepping stones. It turned out pretty well. To install the landscape timbers, I was using  rebar – metal rods that were about 18 inches long. I drilled holes in the timbers and drove the rebar through the timbers and into the ground to hold them in place. As I put the very last landscape timber into place, and drove the last piece of rebar into the ground, I stood up to survey the project. I was feeling pretty satisfied with myself. Then I turned around and saw my water meter box. For a brief instant I thought, “It’s a good thing I didn’t hit the water supply line with one of those pieces of rebar. I turned back around just in time to see up through the ground come-a-bubbling water – my water. Somehow I had managed to drive the very last piece of 3/8-inch rebar through a ¾-inch plastic pipe 14’’ under the ground. It went right through the center. I could not have made that shot if I was trying. I had to shut off the water and spend a day digging a trench along the water main so I could repair the break. Of course, a big portion of my walkway had to be torn up to repair the water line. Things had not worked out according to my plan.

I think that little home improvement project gives a description of our lives. We make plans for things, we try to carry them out, and we encounter unexpected problems along the way. Life is unexpected problems and situations that you encounter.

I don’t know what you think of John Lennon. I don’t think too much of him. But that member of the Beetles was credited with the following quote:  “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”

Things seldom go according to all the plans that we so carefully make. And how often do we make our plans and think they will be for the best, only to discover that God has something even better planned for us? The problem with many of the plans you and I make for our future is that we often neglect to ask God to show us His plans. Too often we make our plans and then ask God to bless them rather than asking His blessing first and that He would to lead us to His plan.

God wants you to  live in the confidence that you are safe in His keeping through faith in Jesus. He wants you to live as His child, in keeping with His will. That is why He sent Jesus to pay for your sins. Knowing that you have forgiveness changes you and how you live your life. I learned that a long time ago, and many of you did as well, when you memorized those words from Luther’s Small Catechism:  …that I may be His own and live under Him in His kingdom and serve Him in everlasting righteousness, innocence and blessedness…

God’s plan is that you believe in Jesus and live with the confidence that He is with you and that He wants only the best for you. He said as much to the crowds who followed Him:

John 6:28-29  Then they asked him, “What must we do to do the works God requires?” Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.”

God’s plan is that you believe in Jesus Christ so that you can have life, abundant life, here and in eternity.