Roadmaps and plans

This was in the church bulletin on Sunday, along with a bunch of others.  I liked some of them, but this one stuck out:

Do you have any idea where you're going? - God


"God Says" billboard

It got me thinking.  I'm not exactly sure where I'm going.  The usual verse people toss out at this point is Jeremiah 29:11, which is bold in the quote below. The rest is to put it in context.  It's a letter written to the exiles in Babylon, when things weren't going well for the Israelites.

Jeremiah 29:10-14

This is what the LORD says: "When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my gracious promise to bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you," declares the LORD, "and will bring you back from captivity. I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you," declares the LORD, "and will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile."

I get that there's a plan, I'm just not sure it would be a good idea to drop the whole thing on me.  Eleven years ago I was a student at Surrey University, quiet, shy and single.  If you'd told me I'd marry the cool but totally unobtainable guy I saw around campus every once in a while I'd have laughed.  Predicting anything that happened during our first year of marriage would have been impossible because it was a recordbreakingly wild year, and moving to America two years after that was not in the original game plan either, but it worked out great.  If I'd known in advance, I wouldn't have believed it, might have tried to actively avoid the whole America thing like Jonah tried to duck out of visiting Ninevah.  Moving to America has been a hugely good thing, but it was very hard to do.  So maybe it's better to be in the dark about the details of the plan.  You don't end up on a beach in the middle of nowhere, cold, wet, freaked out, and smelling of whale.  I don't know exactly where I'm going, and that's OK.