BLOWN OFF COURSE
I don't know anyone that has a life that has gone exactly as they planned, do you? Even those of us that have committed our ways to the Lord can't brag about how smoothly our lives have unfolded. Face it. Life is filled with many unexpected twists and turns. I call this “The Crazy Crooked Path”, something that all of us can identify with.
I can't think of a better story to demonstrate how God is at work in the midst of a seemingly crazy, crooked path, than the story of the Mayflower. In December of 1620, the tired travelers finally approached land. They thought the trip would take no more than 35-40 days. It took 66 days. Sixty six days of disease, seasickness, storms and days of being confined below deck with the continual stench of rotting food and buckets of human waste.
Their intended destination was what is now modern day Manhattan. But storms blew them off course and they finally made landfall 250 miles north of their carefully planned target
Did God have a different plan? A plan they couldn't comprehend at the time?
One of the benefits of landing in Massachusetts rather than New York was that they were well outside of the boundaries of previously established colonies, therefore they had the right to build their community and establish their own laws without interference from England or other colonies.
Another amazing “coincidence” was “the sudden, astonishing appearance of the one individual in all of North America who seemed specifically equipped to rescue them at a time of desperate need.”* His name was Squanto. At twelve years of age, Squanto had been kidnapped by an English sea captain and forced to lived nine harsh years in London. He was kidnapped again, rescued by Spanish monks, then lived with a British family for a few more years. When he finally returned to America, only six months before the Mayflower arrived, he discovered he was the sole survivor of an epidemic that had wiped out his people, the Patuxet band that had lived in the area.
With his command of the English language, Squanto was hugely instrumental in helping the Wampanoag Tribe make an alliance with the Pilgrims, resulting in a treaty that lasted more than 50 years. Squanto also chose to make his home with the Pilgrims and to help them learn to survive in their new, hostile environment, teaching them how to plant corn, how to catch the nutritious eels from the streams and how to trap fish in the fast-flowing rivers.
Truly, without the unexpected help from an unexpected person in an unexpected place, these settlers most likely would have gone down the path of most of the previous English settlers; total failure.
“Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand.” Proverbs 19:21 ESV
I don't know about you, but I would rather it be God's plans that prevail, not mine.
* from Michael Medved's book, The American Miracle, p.34
