Day 105: “No matter what happens, God always has a plan.”

DAY 105

Faith in the Midst of a Pandemic

A series of daily reflections for people of faith

by Rev. Robert Bayley, Interim Pastor

Patuxent Presbyterian Church, California, Maryland

WEEK FIFTEEN: SATURDAY 27 JUNE 2020

“No matter what happens, God always has a plan.”

“Thirty years ago, Julio Guzman, a refugee from El Salvador, founded a Hispanic evangelical church in New Jersey that grew to some 200 members. His wife served as co-pastor….Then in April Pastor Guzman died of Covid-19…He was 64. Like so many families whose members have been hospitalized during the pandemic, the Guzmans were forbidden to visit. But Pastor Guzman was able to text a final message to his eldest son, William: ‘I love you. No matter what happens, God always has a plan.’” - From a newspaper series “Those We’ve Lost” 

It’s easy to say ’God always has a plan’ when a circumstance is something to celebrate. “God is good – all the time; all the time – God is good” goes the popular call and response between Christians. To say it while watching a loved one die a slow painful death from cancer, when your dream job has been eliminated and you are without definition of your person and you’ve lost your source of income, to watch in emotional numbness as your marriage is being dissolved by divorce, or to lose a child at age 5 as Pastor Guzman did  – does this work then, this “No matter what happens, God always has a plan”?

The problem with needing to have a plan is that when we don’t have a plan or can’t see one, we feel untethered, lost, out of control. For Christians, faith by definition is a commitment to, a trust in, that which we can neither see nor prove. There is only one alternate belief system when it comes to Pastor Guzman’s last words: God doesn’t always have a plan and sometimes we are left on our own, left to fend for ourselves, left to decipher life on our own, a frightening scenario.

One of the core tenets of Reformed theology is the sovereignty of God, a belief that ultimately God rules over everything, that nothing is outside the scope of His gaze and care, and that what Pastor Guzman articulated in his dying words to his son is trustworthy and true: “No matter what happens, God always has a plan.”  Believing this can be a source of hope and peace and even joy.

Reflective question: Where do you have the hardest time seeing God in your personal history? Talk to Him about it and ask him to show you His plan embedded in that chapter of your life.

Reflective Scripture:  Jeremiah 29:11 – “For I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord …”

Reflective hymn:

“Trust and Obey” – John Sammis (1846-1919)

Not a burden we bear, not a sorrow we share, but our toil He doth richly repay;

Not a grief nor a loss, not a frown nor a cross, but is blest if we trust and obey.

Trust and obey, for there’s no other way,

To be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.