Squiggly reflections

Last night, I cuddled on the couch, nursing a mighty head cold and finishing a book. In the background, Planet Earth played on the livingroom’s flat screen at my in-law’s house. Outrageous sea creatures and 400,000 lb. whales swam across the screen. Female sea turtles, who hadn’t eaten in months, glided across the ocean’s sandy bottom in search of the exact same beach where they were hatched decades ago. Vulnerable baby turtles, still wet and crusty from their recent births, broke free of confining shells, dug themselves out of their sandy nests, and struggled toward the surging surf. Throughout the breathtaking scenes, the documentary’s narrator reiterated over and over again: “We don’t know how the turtles return to the same beach years later to lay their own eggs. We still don’t know where the whales go to breed. We don’t know. We don’t know. We don’t know.”  

I heard God’s still small voice, the one that I so often ignore, remind me: “Daughter, there is still so much that you don’t know. Wouldn’t it make sense, though, that I, who cause sea turtles to migrate thousands of miles in search of a lone beach and who orchestrate entire ecosystems that mankind still doesn’t understand, will cause everything concerning you to work as I designed it in My timing? Don’t you think that I will create life in your body in a way beyond comprehension just as I also create life under the ocean’s waves?”

^“12We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!

¹³But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.” I Corinthians 13: 12-13

I don’t see clearly yet. I’m seeing squiggly reflections of God’s plan for my life.

As our reflections blur in panes of glass and iridescent surfaces, so our abilities to see the perfect destiny prepared for us by God ahead of time also remains fuzzy, uncertain, squiggly. That doesn’t mean that the plan is not good. Rather, it just means that “until completion” we have a mission: trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, and love extravagantly.