Daily Manna · Day 71 · March 12
A Man Plans His Way
“A man's heart deviseth his way: but the LORD directeth his steps.”
Your calendar for next year may already be filling up: a job change, a move, the trip you promised yourself. Planning feels like being in control, and losing control feels like failing.
Set that beside the world this proverb came from, because both the differences and the likenesses matter. A farmer in Israel made his plans in a land where the whole year depended on whether the early rains came in the autumn. He could not insure anything, and he could not easily move away. He planned anyway: when to sow, which field to rest, which family his daughter would marry into. Planning was not a modern worry, and Proverbs never treats it as wrong. "A man’s heart deviseth his way" simply describes what people do; it does not scold. Deviseth means "plans." The same chapter says, "Commit thy works unto the LORD, and thy thoughts shall be established." That assumes you have plans worth handing over to Him.
The second half of the verse adds who is in charge: "but the LORD directeth his steps." The word is steps, and it means each single step, the next one and the one after it. God is not usually overruling your five-year plan in one big move; He is quietly guiding each ordinary day, one step at a time.
The farmer and the person with a phone full of plans are different in almost every way. They are alike in the one way that hurts: neither of them controls the rain.
So the honest question was never whether you should plan. The question is how many of the things on your calendar are only proposals, and how many you have secretly decided God is not allowed to change. Hold your plans with an open hand, because the One who directs your steps is good, and He sees every one of them.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 71 is On the Bed (Psalm 41:1).