The other day while I was driving to a show, I started thinking about a scene from The Painting 3. Nevaeh is talking with her grandfather Gerald about the tadpoles, but she calls them frogs. Her reason was, they will become frogs, so why not just name them what they will become?  Well in the story there is a moral to that lesson, which is somewhat different than what my mind created during my drive. It started making me think about God’s plan and what it might be for us?

We don’t know what we’re going to become. Nobody tells us. We may be very good at ballet, or football, or writing… whatever our talent is, but it doesn’t mean that’s what God’s plan is for us. I started thinking about the human interference. What if that ballet dancer, or that football star, doesn’t make it to see their full potential?

Let’s go back to the tadpoles, or even caterpillars. Do their parents tell them when they’re born what they’re going to become? Do they say as to their young tadpoles, you’re going to grow up, lose your tail, hop out of the water and become a frog? Does a caterpillar’s mother tell them that you’re going to do nothing but eat, then cocoon yourself and emerge as a butterfly and fly away? I actually don’t think mother frogs and mother butterflies stick around to have a conversation with their young. Maybe I’m wrong. But I think it’s the same as God not telling us what his plan is for us.

Take a parent, the father of a future football star. This father may have every intention that his son is going to grow up to be the best football player ever. He may give him gifts of footballs, encourage him, take him out in the yard and throw that ball, push him through high school, college, pray he’ll go pro – the question is, will it happen?

Was that the son’s plan? Did the son want that for himself or was he following his father’s plan? Say he was following his father’s plan, and he works himself so hard at practice, to make his father proud, that he ends up falling asleep behind the wheel and crashes. Does he go to heaven feeling like a failure? Did he fail his father? Say his goal truly was to become a football star and he falls and breaks his leg and is not able to become a pro football player, did he fail God? Did he fail himself? No!

God doesn’t tell us His plans for us. He does that for a reason. So that way we can never fail him.

Picture a ballet dancer, the best anyone has seen in a long time. She’s going to go all the way to become the Prima ballerina. But one day, well, she’s walking down the street towards the ballet studio and some bad guy kills her. Her dream, her goal in life is over. And this has not only devastated her family, but the entire town.

They say that everything happens for a reason, and it’s all part of God’s plan. So the question is, was killing that ballerina part of God’s plan?

That bad guy is now in prison, the family is without their daughter. The world is deprived of a beautiful dancer, and it’s all because that one person decided to break the law. But God’s question is, what are you going to do about it?

Sure the family will grieve. Maybe they will hate this man for the rest of their lives. Maybe they will forgive him. Maybe they will do something in their future to benefit others to bring awareness, to help those in need, who knows? Maybe that bad guy will take all of that time and isolation while in prison to find God. Maybe out in the real world, in his criminal life, he never had that opportunity. I guess I can always find a silver lining.

Was that God’s plan? Good things may have come from it but something bad had to happen. What is the reason?

Well the same could be said if there was peace on Earth. If everybody got along and nobody ever hurt anybody else and everything was perfect, maybe we would all live longer, live together in big cities and metropolises, cut down more forests to build our apartment buildings, and chase the animals out of their homes. Maybe that ballerina was walking down the street past an alleyway with her breakfast sandwich heading to the studio when a hungry bear smelled her food and attacked her for it. And she still died. The family would grieve. The bear would probably be punished with death, but maybe that would focus the family into a new goal of wanting to help move the animals to a safe location before we cut down their forests to build our homes. There’s always a reason for everything.

We do not know what God’s plan is for us. We have dreams. We have goals in life. We may or may not see them come true. We may want to be a football star and may not make it. We may want to become a household name in the author world, but who knows? God has given us talents and we follow those talents, but who knows if that is our actual reason for living. Is my actual reason for living to entertain young readers? To educate children through my stories? To inspire people through my Christian fiction? I don’t know. Maybe God gave me a talent so I’ll have something to do while I grow To live through all of my life’s daily challenges which will prepare me for what He really has in store for me?

The point is, like the tadpole that will eventually become a frog, or the caterpillar that will eventually become a butterfly, we don’t know what our future holds. We can’t give ourselves our final name until we get there. We must always live each day at a time, because we don’t know when our last day will be. If we knew what God’s plan was, we might rush to the end without learning everything we needed to learn to get there. If we knew that God’s plan was for us to NOT get there, to die young, well that would suck. That’s why he doesn’t tell us. That’s why the tadpole doesn’t know that it’s going to become a frog because it may not make it. Why the caterpillar doesn’t know if might actually become a butterfly because it might not make it. And that’s why we don’t know what our future holds because we may not make it. It’s not a bad thing – something good will ALWAYS come out of it – if we are willing to see it. All we can do is try our best, follow our dreams, utilize our God-given talents, and appreciate each day that we have. Because it might be our last.


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