schemes

Sometimes I have trouble going to sleep at night. Usually it’s because I can’t stop my brain; my mind can buzz with thoughts and ideas and things I need to do.

I used to think that was a sign of high productivity, but this morning, as I continue my read through Ecclesiastes, I wonder. I was especially brought up short by Ecclesiastes 7:29:
“This only have I found:
    God created mankind upright,
    but they have gone in search of many schemes.”

Isn’t that true? We all have our big plans for success, our ideas of how to get ahead. We’re going to go to school and work in this career field making that much money. Someday, we’ll live in that dream house in that special place. In our retirement, we intend to buy vineyards or travel overseas or live half the year down south. So we figure out how to make money, and how to stay young and beautiful, and how to get all the things we want to live that life we collect on Pinterest.

So what makes a plan different that a scheme? I think for the author of Ecclesiastes, it has a lot to do with who’s leading. My scheming to0 often puts me in the lead, and trusts me to work things out. A scheme is an attempt to get around the way things are supposed to be, and in my life that’s the way laid out by God and modeled for me by Jesus.

The opposite of scheming is reliance on God’s providence. The opposite of scheming is planning just how I can identify God’s will and do it. I think that kind of planning has a lot less to do with my job and my home and money and my leisure, and a lot more to do with my heart and my service.

I’ve gone in search of many schemes in my life, but sometimes (and more often lately) I’ve instead just tried to follow God. I’ve tried to look at each day as a thing he has made, and just tried to experience it and enjoy it rather than control it. When I do that, I find the opposite of what Ecclesiastes describes: I find a lot of meaning in my life.