Gò0dNews for Everyone
Plans Change
W
by Angie Bishop Forsyth
e all make plans in our lifetimes. As children,
a simple life—with the small-town existence and normal
we plan to get through school, start a career,
family—never materialized, but instead, his life was much
and maybe get married and have a family. We
harder than and different from what he planned.
also make plans daily, and all go with the expectations that
And how about Jesus’s aunt and uncle, Elizabeth and
those plans will be carried out just as we imagined them.
Zechariah? They were a couple who could see a future
But what if we were born and knew from the start, as Jesus
together with a house full of children, but it didn’t quite play
did, the plans the whole time?
out as they had planned. Years kept passing, and no children
My guess is we’d try to outrun those plans, especially
came, but heartache, despair, and doubt did, until one day,
knowing the outcome could be painful and hard. Let’s take
God blessed them with a son named John the Baptist. The
a look at how plans changed for Jesus’s family from what
two found joy in John but never planned life to go the way
they themselves thought it would be. Take Joseph, Jesus’s
it did. As John grew into a man, his plan in life was to serve
earthly father. Joseph had plans to marry the love of his life,
and baptize those in Jesus’s name. John, Jesus’s cousin, never
Mary. Imagine the shock he got when, during the courtship,
planned to suffer and lose his life for that very cause.
Mary came and told him she was with child and how the
Then we have James, Jesus’s brother, a boy who loved
angel of the Lord came to him and backed up that truth.
his older brother and planned out a life alongside him doing
That changed the whole course of Joseph’s plan, and near
brotherly things. James couldn’t wrap his head around Jesus
the end of his life, he knew that what he had imagined as
one day going off the deep end, claiming to be the Messiah. What? That wasn’t right! And their precious mother, Mary, who from the very beginning never planned on birthing the Savior of the world, much less having to watch him suffer and die for it: this whole entire family of Jesus’s had dreams and plans, yet life for all them went drastically differently! Though different from what they had planned, they all experienced a life that was richer. In my own experiences in life, I too have made plans. Some have gone according to my plan, but many have gone astray. I realize in those that have gone very differently than what I had planned, I see God had His own plan the entire time: a plan in shaping and making me into who He wants me to be. And like the family of Jesus, I endured hardships, suffering, doubt, and despair, but like the family of Jesus, I also got to experience a richer, fuller life in Christ, my Savior and friend, who has had His own plan from which He has never wavered. I’ll forever
38 // January 2021
About The Author
praise Him for that!
My name is Angie Bishop Forsyth. I am a local of Rome, Georgia, now for 30 + years. I’m just a simple lady with heart that chases after God! I love to share about him anywhere I can. To me there’s no one or no thing on this earth, greater to talk about! God has blessed me in tremendous ways and I not only love to tell about it, but I live to tell about it!
