Man’s Plans vs. God’s Plans

I have such good intentions when I start off my day or my week. I carefully plot out which errands I will do when, which items on the to-do list to take care of, which friends and family I will get to spend time with or at least call back. It is thoughtful planning: “considered,” to use David’s phrase in the midrash.

But then life intervenes. One of the kids gets sick, or the babysitter quits (again), or there’s a crisis at work, and the whole plan goes out the window. “I used to plan and decide,” as David says, how I would spend my time—but in the end, my feet took me where they would. In the end, as David declares, I learned to go with the flow and see the out-of-control march through daily life as part of a Divine plan. I turned back to You.

“If you follow My laws,” there will be a reward, our parashah tells us. We will reap some benefit that we would not experience if we were to choose a different lifestyle or set of beliefs. I do not understand the reward as something Divinely given; I think it is a reward we create for ourselves. We who choose a life of faith are “rewarded” with a sense of calm and assurance as we walk through our days—something that those who hold other beliefs cannot experience in the same way. One of the rewards of faith is the sense that wherever we end up—and I’m guessing it’s not always as lofty as the synagogues and houses of study that the midrash envisions David frequenting — it was the place where God meant us to be.