Who’s on First, What’s on Second

Prov 16:9

9          The mind of man plans his way, but the LORD directs his steps. (NAS)

Have you ever had days where your mind doesn’t want to work right?  I have sometimes.  Today is one of those days.  It is not exactly that it didn’t work right, it is just that my mind has been so focused on creative projects that I have been finding my concentration not like it should be and forgetting to do things I need to do.  Which reveals to me-lack of my listening to God as to how to spend the day.  What showed me recently that I sometimes get too caught up in my projects is my concentration just isn’t there.  Like this evening.  I have been knitting a sweater and besides that, trying to learn new knitting patterns.  Well, this evening I couldn’t follow knitting instructions on a bunch of patterns for the life of me.  As I needed to prepare, and thank God God was with me and directing me on it, for a class I will be teaching tomorrow night - making the lesson plans from scratch, I was able to lay aside the knitting to take care of the lesson preparation.  And thank God it is God who is giving me the layout of material to present and how, each week.  Once I completed the lesson plans, I started printing out some material I will hand out tomorrow night and then got back to working on learning more knitting patterns.  Well as time went on, I was just messing up royally-not counting stitches correctly, not understanding the directions.  And one pattern I believe I had tried out before successfully was really getting botched up.  I was asking myself why I was having the problem and began to think, maybe, just maybe God wants me to stop doing that and get on to something else.  So disgusted by my lack of progress and figuring maybe God was sending me a message, I laid my needles and yarn down and came into my little computer room  figuring I needed to check to see if I need to run off more copies of papers I have written out for my Friday morning activity, and what did I find?  I had not finished collating and putting away the papers I had printed out for tomorrow night’s class.  I knew right then, putting the knitting down was the right thing to do.  So I finished that job up and checked to see if I needed more paperwork for tomorrow morning, and lo and behold, I do.  So once I send this to the webmaster, I will be starting that.  And in the meanwhile, I was thinking-asking myself if I had sent the webmaster this Friday’s devotional.  I called him and learned I hadn’t, and that further to me all my problems with the knitting definitely had to do with me being out of God’s will.  I had tuned God out this evening and not realized that.  I thank God He brought it to my attention and He is now able to direct my steps again. 

God really is a gracious God.  And merciful.  If He weren’t, He wouldn’t have wasted His time with me.  But He persisted in trying to get my attention and succeeded.  Does God have to get your attention that way sometimes?  Does God have to almost knock you on the head like He does me sometimes to get you to pay attention to what He wants you to do?  I hope you do better than I do.  But I am grateful He does not give up on me when I get caught up in things.  He never leaves me nor forsakes me, and

Prov 3:12

12        For whom the LORD loveth he correcteth; even as a father the son in whom he delighteth. (KJV)

Am I ever glad for that!  I hope you are too.  Don’t be like me and get too caught up in the things you like so that you  miss hearing from God.  Keep your ears, heart, mind, and eyes open to His will, that He may direct your paths and that your paths may be smoothed out. 

God bless and have a great weekend.  The Good News Lady