Failure or Opportunity?

The funniest thing just happened.

 Sort of.

I am sitting here with my computer in my lap, putting the finishing touches on an especially smart, poignant blog post when my dog came along to snuggle next to me, put her head on the edge of my computer, and deleted the whole thing. (I can tell you that it was smart and poignant because none of us will ever see it. I'm not smart enough to recover it from the bowels of cyberspace...)

Anyway, instead of looking for something new to work on, I tried to go back and re-create it. I stared at the blank screen trying to remember the sheer genius of the phrasing that had seemed so right but got...nothing. I have to start fresh.

Life is just like that sometimes, though, isn't it? We think we have everything perfect, just the way it should be, and something comes along to completely wipe it out. We scramble, trying to fix it all back up. I have the image of the tide rushing in to dissolve a child's sand castle. Instead of moving to higher ground, they tried to rebuild the castle, a futile effort as the sand is being pulled out to sea.

I think about all the times my efforts have been washed away. I use up all my energy trying to fix things, make them look just like they used to, instead of looking for the new path. The new opportunity. The fresh start.

 But it doesn't always feel like a fresh start, does it? Sometimes it feels like failure. It feels like we have done something wrong.

This is where faith comes in. In Isaiah 43:18-19, God says "Do not remember the former things or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?" Sometimes the Lord is trying to take us a new direction, to open new possibilities up to us, and we are trying to make the old stuff come back.

Every day that we wake up breathing is a new possibility. If you are reading this post, that means that God still has a plan for you. Open your eyes and look around...His plans don't always look like our plans, but He will accomplish the purpose that He has for you.

Life is dynamic, ever-changing. The end of a plan doesn't mean failure...it just means that a new one is starting. How exciting is that??