Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase. Martin Luther King, Jr.

I started writing a novel a few years ago.  Sometimes you have to put your writing away for a while and brood over it.  It’s in my head – I just haven’t had the time to sit down and finish it.   I tried opening it a couple weeks ago and was able to find the first few paragraphs, but the rest of the manuscript has disappeared into cyberville.  Maybe it’s floating on someone else’s cloud.

How often do we put things on hold, intending to get at them sometime in the future, but then something happens to deter those plans?  For example we plan to spend more time with our children, but work gets in the way.  We look forward to retirement and health issues bog us down.  We desire to go to a certain university, but can’t make the grade.  Our dreams may include having several children, but miscarriages happen.

Why does God put these obstacles in our way?  I don’t have the answer to that, other than knowing that God has prearranged our lives, according to His will.  There’s nothing we can do to change that, but accept that His will is always for our good.  In the process, He’s molding us – tempering us – designing us for our place in heaven.

In the meantime, that doesn’t hold much water when we’re struggling through these disappointments.  We get discouraged.  We lose hope. We often give up.  This is when Satan moves in and causes us to doubt God’s direction for us.  We become cynical, angry, frustrated and lose faith, but this is also the time when Jesus grabs our hands and says, “It’s OK, I’ve got this.”

My manuscript may show up in one of the packed boxes in our garage, or maybe not.  In any event, maybe I need to focus on something else right now.  The words are still in my head and may come back to me before I drift into dementia, but it really doesn’t matter.  God has a plan for me and I am convinced that the end of the story will live on in eternity.