Paths beyond tracing out

Ever wonder why God allows certain steps to take place which seem to be headed in the opposite direction He is leading you?

Ever feel as though you have wasted time pursuing a road when God closes that door to open a completely different one?

Ever find yourself discouraged as you wait to see how God plans to lead you through this next phase in your life?

I have.

Yet, the longer I live, the more I see God's plan unfold in all its beauty and complexity.

Romans 11:33 says, "Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out!"

Just this week, God has shown me, in part, why He allowed an occurrence I did not understand at the time I lived through it.

Last year, as I waited to hear from the newspaper which later hired me, I interviewed at a different newspaper in a small town, where my college roommate lived.

Nothing resulted immediately from the interview at the different newspaper, and I received the position, where I work now.

This past weekend, I visited my college roommate, and I attended her newly established church in the town where I had interviewed with the local paper.

During my visit, God impressed on my heart to write an article about the establishment of this new church, so I did.

Today, I submitted the article to the newspaper where I had interviewed but did not receive the job, and the editor called and said the article would run next week!

If I had not interviewed there almost a year ago, I seriously doubt that I ever would have written the article, but God had a plan for me which I knew nothing about at the time.

Nothing takes God by surprise, and no experience is ever pointless or wasted.

"The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. 'For in him we live and move and have our being.' As some of your own poets have said, 'We are his offspring.'" ~ Acts 17:24-28