God’s Little Schemes

It was a day unlike the usual. We received a phone call saying that we passed the professional board exam! A day of good news for my Arl and me, I must say. But why was I feeling a bit edgy? You see, I was having a little problem just how exactly we will celebrate the day.

A couple of hours had passed and I was still wondering what to do when Arl’s best friend unexpectedly met and joined us in the mall. “I came to celebrate the day with you,” he said. Was I surprised? You bet I was! He was the answer to my hours of unproductive planning and imagining.

To make the story short, we dined together in a fine restaurant outside the mall, laughed over a funny movie we decided to watched, and spent the rest of the day talking while enjoying a plate of kikiam and squid balls. It was simple. Yet, it was great.

Oftentimes, we plan and think too much. We want things to be perfect. No hassle. No error. We want things and events in our lives just the way we imagine them.

There is a very big danger to thinking and planning too much. Without us knowing, this could become a habit. We can be trapped. If this happens, we will become persons who never get to action. We will become persons who are so obsessed with planning a celebration that at the end of the day we will realize that we have never celebrated at all.

Think about this: we are already given enough reasons to be happy, yet we still plan how to make happiness happy.

There is another way out of this controlling fear of being out-of-control. We can let God take control. His little schemes are far better than ours. And the only thing which God requires from us is our openness and acceptance. We should realize that it is not how perfect we plan and think. It is how God in that particular moment touches and changes us and how, as a result, we make other people share and enjoy His presence too.

God wants us not merely to be happy but to be happiest. He wants our joy to be complete. God, therefore, surprises us in many ways. He uses events, people, even the ways we so least expect. But are we always ‘in’ for God’s surprises? Are we present to enjoy His little schemes? Or are we too busy, too preoccupied to notice the little miracles that He sends our way?

I believe this is the part where we should think.