You’ve got your sights set on your destination. You can see it – You can almost TASTE it. Your plan is good, everything points toward success. All you have to do is grasp it and hold on tight.
Suddenly, everything is changed. The path to your destination is blocked, out of the question. You could see it, taste it, but in an instant, your vision turns blurry. The sweet taste of success has gone sour in your mouth. What you’d reached forward to grasp is now covered in oil, and the tighter your grip, the quicker it slips away. What do you do, where can you turn, how do you go about moving on?
You can, and you will. The fact is, life has always been like that, and I promise you, as long as you’re alive in this life you can count on the curves being there. You don’t have to embrace them, but if you don’t accept them and keep on going, you’re finished.
Now, I’ll admit it, I’ve always loved the Bible. Yes, the Bible. The Book. For a lot of people, that will make me strange right off the bat. It’s not popular or accepted in this ‘modern’ world to admit that you read, much less love, the Bible. I’m not going to give you all of the reasons here; when you’re writing a short blog, one of the key words is ‘short’. Here and now, I’m going to go into just one small area of Old Testament History and tie it to the point of this blog, moving on.
Joseph
Joseph was a favored young man. He was the favorite son among many brothers. He was even immortalized in the movie, if I remember the title correctly, ‘Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat’.
Essentially, Joseph was a dreamer. In his youthful dreams he alienated his brothers, and even his father, with his tales of those dreams, for in them, he became a ruler over his brothers, most of whom were older than him. His father showed his favor for Joseph by giving him this beautiful coat of many colors. I’m sure that Joseph, in his thoughts, dreams, and plans, figured that being the favorite of his father, and obviously favored by God, he was going to live the good life, become rich, and rule over all he saw. I mean, it was pretty obvious.
If you know the rest of the story, you’ll remember that Joseph’s brothers almost decided to kill him and finally settled on just selling him into slavery and convincing his beloved father that Joseph must be dead. For years, Joseph lived a life that was the opposite of the one he thought he would be living. But, in the end, after going from slavery to prison to narrowly avoiding death, Joseph was finally in a position of authority that he had long since given up on. For the whole story, read Genesis 37 – 50.
My Point
The point I’m trying to get across is this: We’ve all got our dreams, we’ve all got our plans. For most of us, we plan and expect success. We don’t plan to fail. We expect the cards to be dealt our way, and we’re going for the royal flush. Life, and especially God’s timetable, isn’t always our hoped for and expected timetable. Roadblocks get in the way. Forks pop up in the road, and while we take the route that looks most likely, we’re often proven wrong. We often must learn the hard lessons of moving on and forward.
I’m convinced a lot of the good things that happen to us are just there as an encouragement, and in the long run, don’t have a lot to do with our final destination. None of us can see or predict the future, but if we opt out early, we can’t expect to see the end of the matter. Sometimes what we initially regard as failure is maybe the most essential step on the road to ultimate success.
What that ultimate success is, truly only God knows. We may experience it and not recognize it. We may think we’ve arrived, only to find out in the end that our arrival was at the wrong destination. For me, I’ll just keep on remembering a saying from my very earliest memories: “for I know Whom I have believed, and am persuaded, that He is able. To keep that which I’ve committed, unto Him, against that day.”
Ask Me A Question About Moving On
If you’re puzzled by anything I’ve written, please comment to me on this blog. I’m often not the clearest of writers, and my point may be a little murky. Not my intent. Ask me, and I’ll try to explain it a little bit clearer. Until the next wild hair blog, May the good Lord bless you richly in all that you do and help you in moving on from strife in your path. Good Hunting!