Impeccable Timing

   Most of the time when I pray I expect the answer to come almost as soon as I finish. I'll read in the Bible about different accounts where before they even finish praying the answer comes. I remember especially the account of Abraham's servant going to find Isaac a wife, and how after arriving at his destination he prayed to the Lord about finding her. The account says, "Before he had finished praying, Rebekah came out..." (Gen 24:15) I read stories like these and have even had some of my prayers answered like this in the past, and parts of me comes to expect it at times. However this is not always how God answers prayers.
   Something I have to begun to see is that God rarely answers my prayers the way I think would be best. In every instance He has far exceeded my expectations, but I sometimes fail to see it in the moment. I was watching a chick flick which rekindled this thought within me. The girl was at a wedding that she had done the flower arrangements for and the preacher came up and was talking to her about her own wedding. She said kind of wistfully, "Well, I have to find him first." He replied, "Maybe he'll find you."
  When I first went to college, I had it all planned out. I was going to get there find the man of my dreams, get married, have kids and be a stay-at-home mom. My major never really was a big deal to me, because honestly, I never thought it would be too much of a factor. But what I didn't plan on happening happened and I soon found myself out of college not even dating with no signs that I will be married anytime in the near future.
   To some this fact could seem super depressing to have plans that you were wanting, even planning upon, to not work out, but the reality of this is far from depressing. You see, throughout this time, I and many others have been praying that I would find a good Christian man to marry, but even more than that, we have prayed for God's will to be done. Since there is not even a man I am dating right now, it is obviously not God's will that I be married at the moment, or I would be. The really cool thing is that God's plan for our lives is so much better than the ones we could ever have for ourselves. At the present I am in the town that I love with people that I love doing things that I love, and while there may be down moments the overall thing is that I am incredibly blessed.
   The point of all this isn't that I'm hoping since I wrote this my knight in shining armor will just ride up tomorrow and sweep me off my feet. Rather it is my attempt to show the depth of God's love in our lives. No matter what the plans we have in our lives whether we're single and hoping that one day we will find the one who will help us serve God in the best ways possible together or whether we have found that helpmate and are searching for something else like a job or have a loved one that is sick and not recovering as quickly as we hoped or... Whatever the plans we have for our lives, we can rest assured in the fact that God is the Creator of the Universe. He created each one of our very existences, and He can guide them in the ways that He sees fit to do so, and when we ask for His will, He gives it to us. No matter what whether quick or drawn out periods of time we can rest assured knowing that God has impeccable timing.

"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." ~Jeremiah 29:11 (NIV)