This Bible verse was always my father's favourite one. The reason stems
from the following story.
During the Second World War, my dad had
orders to report for duty on a ship due to sail through the Gulf of
Mexico. At the time, that stretch of water was known as Torpedo Alley.
The day his train left Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, USA, for the seaport
at Mobile, Alabama, mother and father prayed that he wouldn't miss the
ship and that he would have safe travels. On the way, his passenger
train was sidetracked for quite a long time to let a munitions train
pass. It seemed to dad that he would surely miss his boat. Although he
prayed again that he would make his ship, his fear became reality. He
missed the boat.
When he reported for duty, he received a
reprimand from his commanding officer and was re-posted to a destroyer
escort. Later, he learned that the other ship, the one that they had
prayed he wouldn't miss, had been torpedoed with great loss of life.
At the time when he missed the ship, everything seemed to be going
wrong for my father. However, in missing the boat, their prayers for
safety had been answered. Dad's prayers didn't match up with God's plan,
nor do our ideas about what ought to be always match up with what God
knows is best.
The fact is that God's plan is always best, and we
need to trust Him!
Prayer: Lord God, in Jesus' name, we pray that
we would know Your will for our lives and that our plans would conform
to it. Amen.
Cassandra Wessel
Tionesta, Pennsylvania, USA Copyrighted, 2017