Expected Oceans and Unexpected Mountains (Friday Devotional)

 

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a town and spend a year there, doing business and making money.” Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wishes, we will live and do this or that.”

- James 4:13-15

When Meriwether Lewis and William Clark led the Corps of Discovery across the western half of the United States from 1803 to 1806, they did so with a destination in mind: the Northwest Passage. It was almost universally believed by geographers and intellectuals of the day—including President Thomas Jefferson, who had authorized Lewis and Clark’s expedition—that there existed a river or series of rivers that ran from the Eastern half of the United States all the way to the Pacific Ocean. To find and navigate such a waterway would give the U.S. a stranglehold on the continent.

So as weeks turned into months, Lewis and Clark were confident that each day was bringing them closer to the Northwest Passage, closer to the goal they’d been seeking this whole time. Finally the big moment came, as Lewis followed the Columbia River to what he believed would be its ultimate source, the Pacific Ocean. Climbing up, he reached his summit and looked out, expecting to see the vast waters of the ocean. Instead, all he saw were endless mountains. The dream of a Northwest Passage revealed itself to be a myth—and instead of the expedition coming to its triumphant end, they had no choice but to persevere onward.

Life is like that sometimes. You have a goal in mind, a course mapped out, a plan in place. You think you know exactly what your future is going to look like—and then, without warning, you are confronted by mountains when you were expecting ocean. Instead of landing that long-awaited promotion, you are laid off. Instead of spending your retirement traveling the world, you spend it in hospital rooms. Instead of your days being filled with joy, they are filled with lonely silence.

It is in those moments that you learn just how finite and fragile your plans are, and how much less the future depends on your designs than on God’s providence. While God honors those who prepare for tomorrow, He does not guarantee those preparations will yield fruit.

What God wants is not for us to pin all our hopes on the plans we make, but instead to place our hope in Him. He wants us to trust His perfect will instead of our own fallible ideas and to follow His way instead of our own. And ultimately, he wants us to have more faith in Him—our Savior and our King—than in ourselves.

Sometimes you can get to the ocean yourself, but other times all you’ll see are mountains. Best then to follow the God who created both.