There’s an old Yiddish proverb that says, “Mann tracht, un Gott lacht,” which translates, “Man plans, and God laughs.” Woody Allen rehabbed it for his audiences: “If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans.”

My plans over a long life have surely provoked gales of laughter from the Almighty. In college, I changed my career ambitions three times, casting them all to the winds in the end. When my wife and I bought the ruin of an enormous house in Waynesville, N.C., with dreams of turning it into a bed-and-breakfast and bookshop, I envisioned a sort of golden life that included writing as well as commerce, only to find that we were both working extra jobs to support our businesses rather than them supporting us.

Largely with my encouragement, we once planned to sell the bed-and-breakfast and escape our debts, but with a real-estate agent sitting in our kitchen ready to sign some papers, my wife’s tears in the living room brought those plans to a dead halt. Her early death ended our hopes of growing old together – I’d also never envisioned raising a son under 10 by myself – and other twists-and-turns in the scheme of things, some major, some minor, some intentional, most accidental, swept me along.

But as I rode that river of revision and change, I slowly learned something new: I learned how to make God smile with me rather than laughing at me.

An Invitation

The planning didn’t stop. After all, we humans are the only creatures on the planet who live simultaneously in the past, present, and future, and the future always involves game plans and propositions.

Like everyone else I know, I continued thinking beyond today, always mapping out a future. Only now I remembered to offer God a place at the table rather than have him looking over my shoulder.

That simple invitation has made all the difference, though not in the way you might think. My plans are still plagued by glitches – most recently a failed battery preventing an out-of-state trip and forgetting once again to pay the annual fees for my local business license. Unlike those earlier years, however, the flaws and mishaps have become, in my mind’s eye, part of the plan rather than running contrary to it. To explain this ongoing alteration in my attitude, I credit the following changes in my thinking and habits.

A Morning Prayer of Gratitude

Online searches show that gratitude brings better health and well-being, enhanced wisdom, an improved attitude toward life, and more. Whatever our troubles, if we stop to consider our lives and everything around us, we can find at least one person or thing for which we are grateful, which can then guide us to the Maker of that object of our appreciation. Consequently, gratitude deepens our faith.

After decades of giving a cursory nod to gratitude, I’m amazed at the difference a simple yet sincere morning prayer has made in my faith and life: “Lord, thank you for another morning and for this day. Let me live it in your name and to your glory.” Even more astounding, that 10-second prayer has the power to shape a 24-hour day.

Incorporation

Incorporation derives from Latin, meaning in the body (corpus). Today it also means “the inclusion of something as part of a whole.” Incorporate the Creator into your day, pepper those short meetings with prayer, and you’ll find yourself growing stronger and better equipped to face trouble. “God is our refuge and strength,” Scripture tells us, “a very present help in trouble,” and these invocations throughout the day, which again take no more than a few seconds, help carry me along through the good and the bad weather.

Moreover, this incorporation makes us more fully aware of the presence of God in the world and in our lives, an awareness which in turn makes us more fully human.

The Nitty-Gritty God

Throughout the Old and New Testaments, we find God working with and on human beings in a physical way. In John 9, for example, Jesus encounters and cures a blind man. After remarking on his condition, Jesus says, “I am the light of the world.” We then read, “When he had thus spoken, he spat on the ground, and made clay of the spittle, and he anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay.”

You can’t get much more nitty-gritty than that.

For years now, I’ve made a daily to-do list. When I blend that inventory of tasks and obligations with invitation, gratitude and incorporation, God is there in those nitty-gritty details. Even when plans go awry, He’s helping me scratch off those chores one by one from the calendar of my days.

And unless I’m mistaken, He’s smiling.

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The republication of this article is made possible by The Fred & Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal. 

Image Credit: Pxhere