In the last couple of days I’ve run into a few people in a certain phase of life I call “the awkward years”. Most people go through this phase at least once in their life… often times when graduating either high school or college.

It’s the phase of life where the main focus of our lives has suddenly come to a conclusion, and we’re left wondering… “What now?!” Sometimes it can take a few years to find a sense of direction, and during those years life can sometimes feel purposeless, and maybe even hopeless.

During these times, there can be so much pressure. We feel as though we need to have it all figured out RIGHT NOW. We feel like the world is big, and we’re so small. Worst of all, we feel as though we’re the only ones struggling. Everyone else seems to have everything so figured out. We start to feel alone, and it feels as though it will always be this way.

I have some thoughts about this phase of life, and I wanted to share them with you. I’ll stagger it into several posts to keep it from getting too lengthy….

I wanted to start here, with this thought:

God doesn’t make mistakes.

We sure do, but God doesn’t. In fact, it seems as though one of his favorite things to do is take a mistake or wrongdoing of ours, and turn it into something glorious. 

“You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.” - Genesis 50:20, NIV

Before you were born, God had a plan for your life. Think about that for a second. Before your PARENTS were born, or before THEIR parents were born, you were an idea in God’s mind. He specifically thought about creating you. At the same time that he was putting the stars in the sky, and igniting the sun, he planned on creating you. It’s a spectacular thought. 

Now when you think about God having a plan for your life…. it has to be understood that this is not the kind of plan than you and I are used to. We tend to think of a plan as a linear, step-by-step process. I’m going to get up, get ready, go to work, get coffee at lunch, go back to work, get groceries, pick up the dry cleaning, and go to a birthday party, and so on. If you accidentally burned your house down at 10am, none of the post-10am plans would happen. It would all be thrown out the window. 

God’s plans aren’t like that. 

We are such linear creatures, human beings. We understand life’s little steps, but we rarely get a glimpse of the overall picture. When God makes plans, He sees it all, both the big picture and the minute details. His plans for you are huge and tiny at the same time. They also involve more than you… His plans include everyone you will ever come into contact with, and His plans for each them involve you also. They are infinitely intricate and elegant. 

While that’s hard enough to comprehend, it’s even harder for us to grasp this next bit - God’s plans include our free will.

In order to have relationship with someone, you need to release them from your control. God created us for relationship…. with each other, yes, but ultimately with Him. He didn’t want mindless little robots that would do his bidding simply because that’s all their capable of. He wanted relationship with beings that CHOOSE to be in relationship with Him. That means that these beings would be capable of choosing just the opposite. The existence of that choice was necessary in order for the relationship to be real and meaningful. 

The incomprehensible elegance of God’s plan for your life is that He’s capable of fulfilling it EVEN THOUGH we each have moments when we choose that second option. Regardless of what we’ve done, the times we’ve walked away from Him, and the moments we’ve chosen to live as though we know better than He does… He loves us…. and His plan is bigger than all that. He loves turning evil into good. 

You can never go so far away from Him that this stops being true. God created you for a reason, and life is the very messy business of discovering it. It seems to take a lifetime, but God doesn’t make mistakes. You are not here by accident.

No matter where you are right now, God sees you. He loves you. And He’s always there… ready to take the darkest parts of you, and say… “Watch what I can do.”