I talk to a lot of people who are in the 18-22 age range that seem to feel pretty helpless. They don’t know what they’re doing next and they feel like they’re stuck where they are. They don’t know how to take the next opportunity. Some of them feel like the opportunity should plop right in their lap without them having to do anything, others of them are working dead-end jobs and discontent there but aren’t willing o do anything else to get out of them.
As I look at my life, it seems most years, God has given me the ability to see toward the next year or so, but leaves the future after that completely blank. I have no clue what’s going to happen two years from now, but God’s set me up in what I’m doing and I’m good with that.
Maybe it’s been too ingrained in kids from a young age that they have to know exactly what they’re doing as far into the future as possible. Even down to the harmless questions people ask about what kids want to be when they grow up gives a connotation like it’s something they should know. What if know what you want to do when your 12 is the most unnatural thing in the world? You may have some interests, but those may take you in hundreds of different directions.
It’s exciting to be able to look to the future and know that you’re moving in some direction. Any direction helps to ward off the feeling of stagnation, but I think we’d be well-off to stop thinking so far into the future thinking that we have so much control over what’s going to happen.
It’s not always bad to plan, but especially as Christians, we can rest in the fact that “A man plans his ways, but the Lord directs his steps.”
Plan and be excited, but be excited about the future, not about what you think the future should be.