A week ago, we were driving home from a week in Memphis, Tennessee (actually, Germantown, a nice suburb of Memphis).  Our return trip had been delayed a day by Killer Storm Landon (I don’t know why every winter storm needs a name!).  Landon was not the killer he was advertised to be, but still it was wise not to travel on Thursday when Memphis was covered in ice and a foot of still-falling snow was piling up on the ground in the north.

Plans are made to be changed.  Scripture suggests that all our plans should be made subject to the possibility that God will change them.  James cautions us, “Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit’— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.’”

If the Lord wills.

We did not need divine revelation to know that this past Friday would be a better travel day than Thursday.  Accuweather made things clear enough.  Friday it would be.  But we weren’t done changing plans.

We choose between two routes on trips to and from Auburn, Indiana, to Germantown, Tennessee.  One we might call the Mississippi River route.  On the return trip we head west across the Mississippi River at Memphis and then drive north not far from the river through parts of Arkansas and Missouri before crossing back to the east side of the Mississippi at Cairo, Illinois.  And then across Illinois and Indiana to Auburn.  The alternative route is the Bourbon Trail route.  East from Germantown to Nashville and then nearly due north through Kentucky and past the bourbon distilleries into Indiana and home.  The trips are nearly identical in distance and, according to Google maps, duration.  I tend to prefer the Mississippi River route not because I like catfish better than bourbon, but because it seems like there are fewer trucks and lighter traffic on the Mississippi River route.

But Landon had left a slick coat of ice along the Mississippi River route and portions of I-55 were still closed Friday morning. So, we headed out for the Bourbon Trail. The traffic was light, the trucks were few, and the ice and snow not an issue.  Home in good time.

So easy was the drive, in fact, that I had plenty of time to contemplate the theological issues involved in the change of our travel plans.

We made the decision for Friday and the Bourbon Trail. It was easy. We wanted to lower the risk of sliding into a ditch along I-65 near the Jim Beam distillery or being stuck in a traffic jam in rural Arkansas.  But did God have some other purpose in all of it?

When the Apostle Paul was trying to get east into Asia Minor, he changed his plans and ended up going west into Europe because the roads east were blocked (we don’t know if it was an ice storm or not).  Ice storm or not, Paul figured it was the Holy Spirit and his good purposes.  The Gospel made its way to Europe.

Did God have some purpose in mind other than safety when he put us on I-65 on Friday instead of I-55 on Thursday? I have no idea.

Seeing God’s purpose driving everything in our lives, some Christians find significance in all that happens, from the road we take to the convenience store clerks we meet. I’m pretty big on God’s providence over everything, but not so big on his purpose in everything.  Some things just are and that’s about it.

Our Confession of Faith (WCF, Chapter 5) puts it this way: God is the first cause, and in relationship to him everything happens unchangeably and infallibly. However, by this same providence, he orders things to happen from secondary causes. As a result of these secondary causes, some things must inevitably happen; others may or may not happen depending on the voluntary intentions of the agents involved; and some things do not have to happen but may, depending on other conditions.

“…some things must inevitably happen; others may or may not happen depending on the voluntary intentions of the agents involved; and some things do not have to happen but may, depending on other conditions.”

Some things just are and that’s about it.

This past Thursday ice and snow covered the country from south to north, from the Mississippi to the Bourbon trail and on to Indiana.  We changed our plans so we travelled on Friday because it would have been stupid to travel on Thursday.  It may be that the Lord’s will is sometimes just that we do not do stupid things. It’s a lesson I need to learn over and over again.