Planned Beauty

I've come to the conclusion that I am a bad New Yorker. Granted I've only been in the city for either a little over two months or a little over two weeks depending on how you look at it. Still,when teams ask me what my favorite park of the city is, I answer "the parks!" with extreme excitement and a high pitched voice. Most of them aren't really thrilled with that answer because they're in the city and they're used to trees. They want to see the buildings, the tourist spots, the things that make New York, well New York and I only offer them the same kind of scenery that they are used to. But I could spend hours in the parks. In fact, just the other day I spent over five hours in Central Park reading and people watching. I love to run around and take pictures in the park too. To try and get you in my mindset, here are some pictures that I took a couple of weeks ago while exploring Central Park.

One of the things that I love most about the park is that it is a vast display of Father's power and control, and His eye for beauty. Now the parks in New York City are designed and planned by man. They are not naturally occurring places of beauty but this does not make them any less beautiful. I think about the time it took to envision something like Central Park with all of the different areas embodying a unique look but still all of them coming together make the whole park a wonderful place to explore. It must have taken a lot of knowledge, time, effort, and creativity to dream up something so magnificent. But even with those dreams and plans and designs, someone else had to have a hand in it.

My days pondering this thought about the parks made me think back to several verses in Scripture.

"People can make all kinds of plans, 
       but only the Lord's plan will happen." Proverbs 19:21

"People may make plans in their minds, 
       but the Lord decides what they will do." Proverbs 16:9

The designers of the park planned where each tree would be planted, where each pathway would be paved, where each rock would be placed but in the end they had little control over what happened. The trees could not grow right. Maybe one tree would overshadow another leaving it stunted and half of what it could have been. Maybe the flowers would not grow or maybe they would become choked by weeds. Maybe their dreams just wouldn't match up with reality. Father took their plans and their seeds and He created life out of them. He took the plan, breathed into it, gave it life, and gave it growth. I'm sure that the designers of the park had something beautiful envisioned, but only God can give life and progress to the plans that we make. I think about churches and dreams for new ministries. We can plan, we can hope, we can dream but without Father having His hand on all that we do, those things are just that-plans, hopes, and dreams. Having the Lord alive and working in our lives on a daily basis means that there are dreams and plans that we have yet to think about but He is already working on. He gives life and growth to our plans. He magnifies them in a way that we never dreamed of. He puts in our hearts new plans and new desires according with His purpose. His plans can never be thwarted or messed up. His plans are far above any plans that we as humans can make. It's amazing and exciting to see His plans unfold and to enjoy the ending results.