Man makes plans and God rejoices!

“Man makes plans and God laughs”. I had posted about this on my Facebook page once before and I feel that it bears repeating.

I’ve heard this saying many times throughout my life. However, I’ve recently started to become skeptical about this saying. We’re often asked why if God is all powerful, all good, and all loving, why He would allow suffering, sorrow, and evil to plague the good world that He created and why he would allow such terrible misfortune and tragedy to the innocent and even to those who love Him. I, and I presume most believers reading this, have been taught that He allows them to happen because a greater good will somehow come out of it. I believe this because I have personally experienced it. To some though, this will not sit well because of the losses and tragedies that they have suffered in their own lives.

What does this have to do with our “plans”? Think about it for a second. What would it say about God if He allows evil and sin and laughs at our plans? Should our Heavenly Father not rejoice in our desires to serve Him in whatever ways our experiences have taken us? Should our Heavenly Father not rejoice in our desires to serve him as husbands and wives oras priests and religious? As men and women of business and commerce? Soldiers? Doctors and nurses? Laborers and construction workers? Teachers? Police officers and firefighters?

Let’s go a bit further. When Jesus called His Apostles, did he tell them “HA! This is no good! Come with me and I’ll show you what it’s about!”? No. He simply said “Follow me”. When meeting the fisherman Peter, our first pope, rather than dismissing his profession as a fisherman, Our Lord perfected it by saying “I will make you a fisher of men”.

When a child says “I want to be (insert occupation), does their father laugh at that?

Once again, you might ask what this has to do with suffering and evil in the world. If there is sin and suffering, what reason would God have to laugh at, to dismiss, or otherwise show such blatant disrespect at how we would hope, using the the gifts of faith and free will which He has entrusted to us, to face that sin and suffering? Even if it were to do something as simple and as great as providing a good life for our children and showing them, to the best of our limited human abilities, the same love that God has for us?

Can any man or woman, whether married, engaged, dating, or single OR priest, religious, or consecrated do the small things with great love? Can we not have our hopes and dreams by which we will show that love to each other, to the world, and above all, God? Should He NOT rejoice in that?

Now, I will not say that this bit of wisdom is completely without truth. After all, we must remain open to whatever God calls us to do. We must not plan our lives out to the smallest of details and be so dead-set on it that God has no room to work. However, if He were to ask us how we thought we would glorify Him in our lives, I for one can envision no other reaction than great joy if we were to tell Him “this is what I want to do, this is how I want to glorify You and this is how I would do it.”

Man makes plans and God laughs? I don’t think so.