Diverted

My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways.  Isaiah 55:8

There’s nothing like a change in travel plans to point out how much I hate to be diverted from my original plan.  I’ve never really thought much about the word diverted; however, last week as we were flying home from a vacation, that word took on new meaning.  The meaning of “divert” is to cause someone or something to change course.  This can obviously happen in life as well as on an airplane.

Our trip home was going fine.  We had a flawless morning, and I was already planning what I needed to do when I got home ahead of schedule.  As we neared the end of our flight, our pilot came on the PA system to announce that there were two storms approaching Atlanta, but he was planning to sneak in and land between the two storms.  That didn’t happen, and before I knew it, the pilot was announcing that we being diverted to Huntsville because we were “dangerously low on fuel”.  Plans diverted.

We were at the end of our journey, but others had connections, rides waiting, scheduled meetings, and other things.   I expected angry, frustrated, disgruntled passengers who were terribly upset at this diversion, but what I found was people who took it in stride and even took the opportunity to talk and socialize with newly made friends.  Most were grateful to the pilot and crew for taking precautions to ensure our safety.

There have been so many times in our lives when the carefully laid plans of ours were replaced by the more important plans of God.  I don’t know anyone who ever planned to deal with cancer, job loss, divorce, addiction,  disease, depression, or sudden death.  I do know that God has greater plans when things happen, and he diverts us for a reason that we may never know in this lifetime.  His ways are not ours, and we would be remiss if we didn’t accept the diversion because He knows the plans He has for us.

Our job is to look for blessings along this diverted path and trust God with the rest.