Nowadays, people are questioning God, his existence and works. I also have my own doubt sometimes. However, I have learned that God has his own plan in our lives. If we want to open up to God, we will find his will.
When we looked back on our lives, no matter how frequently (or infrequently for that matter) we do that, we sometimes find that there is a plan in our lives. If we trace back our ways, no doubt we will find out that things are sometime do not match our rational thought. Coincidence some may say others label it as pure luck. In fact, in social science research we sometimes said that although two events happen one after another, it does not mean that one causes the other. Moreover, hindsight is grouped into what we called biases. Numerous studies have been done to find out about human’s lack of complete rationality due to this phenomenon. For all we know, human likes to put things together. If one thing happens and it leads to another thing, then both of them are related.
Well, I do not know about you, but sometimes I feel that coincidence is not in fact a mere luck. You can see it in your past how events were tied together and there is this entity (which I called God) that has planned everything. When we saw that our steps were planned we tended to think that there is this God who is all powerful and smart that has planned our way. I had this thought when I find myself in difficulties last year. When I looked back on my situation, I can find God’s plan. Before facing that difficulty, God equipped me adequately. During that time that I realized that in fact God really planned my life.
My conversation with my brother led us to this topic as well. He reckoned that if you can see his plan once we gone through the whole ordeal and looked back, why can’t we look to God and let him disclose his plan on our future. Believe it or not, I found myself struggling with the concept. Although it sounds just right and reasonable, I could not help asking my brother about how to know about it. Am I supposed to do nothing? Should I pray all day long and wait for a ‘fatherly’ voice resounding in my silence? How to know God’s plan?
My brother told me that believing that God has a plan is a faith level 1. Faith 1.0, if you will. It is a start to have better faith, faith 2.0. In between perhaps we needed to update or faith and went through 1.1,1.2 etc. Having ability to listen to God’s plan is a faith 2.0 for me. And luckily, my upgrade happened rather fast.
Just a while ago, I was anxious with my application. Well, I will know the result of my admission in March and in fact nothing to worry about. And yet, I can help but to be anxious. Waiting is something unpleasant. I needed to wait for another 1 month and I did not like it. If I can I would want to press fast forward until March. I guess same things happened to many of you. Whether it is waiting in line at the supermarket cashier or waiting for a job interview, our lives full of waiting.
A while after having that anxiety from waiting I found myself cleaning up my laptop. And, I encountered a words document about the art of waiting. Written by one of my friends, it was about how she made full use of waiting in her life. I have no clue as to how the writing is there. In fact I asked her about it and we could not figure it out. I did not bother about the message. I thought that it is a nice piece of writing but well like any other nice piece of writing, it is something to learn for. And yet I thought that I did not have the problem of waiting just yet.
The day after reading my friend’s writing, I went to church. As usual, I had always come to church every Sunday. Nothing extraordinary for that matter and yet that was the time I come to understand Faith 2.0. As you may have imagined, the sermon touches upon the reading of Simeon and Anna. For those of you that were not familiar of the story, Simeon was a good person that is destined to die only after seeing the earth’s saviour. So, all his life, he needed to keep on waiting for the saviour to come.
Waiting. The message is in fact about waiting again. Wait patiently. Do not be anxious. God knows what is good for you. There I realized that God in fact has his plan on me. And I can know about it in real time if I learn to be more sensitive about it. I do not need to looked back anymore to know that God has a plan for me.
Maybe some of you may think that it is just a mere coincidence. Or perhaps a bias. When two events happened near to each other you may say that it is coincidence. In fact, if it is only two events you can always say that they are related.  But what is the chance of three events correlate? Those events are out of my control. I could not affect my pastor’s choice of reading nor read the file that was already there all along on that day.
I believe that that is not coincidence. There is someone out there that love me to teach me how to wait. I can treat these events to be mere coincidence and do not learn something. But I believe that God’s plan is for me to learn.
So, is it really, in hindsight, God has planned everything? You do not need to look back to know God’s plan for you. You can know it real time. You can know about it if you just believe. Learning to have faith like a child is a very difficult undertaking and I do not say that I have now a perfect faith. In fact, I might even still be in Faith 2.0 beta version. Some of you may have had a better faith than me and I hope you can always improve it. As for me, I will need to start refining my faith 2.0 so that when the time is right, I can be even more faithful to God.
So, instead of in hindsight, I can already say that in real time, God has planned everything….
