So there was this partial case of wine, a merlot that I’d tried and relished, which was kept in a small closet in the basement where we keep canning jars and canned goods, plus seldom-used cookware such as the turkey roaster. I decided this week that we needed a wine rack to properly store the eight bottles of wine left in that case.

After looking at some plans online, I determined that they all required skills or materials that I did not possess. And there were some random left-over boards.cluttering up the workshop. The materials would determine the size and shape of the rack, and the only plan available was the idea in my head.

My good friend, Art, is great at making plans. He makes neat, clear, and precise drawings, then selects the correct dimensional lumber and cuts it into pieces that all fit together perfectly. I stared at the cedar boards in my shop, and just started ripping them to one inch square stock. The leftovers turned out to be one half inch with rounded edges. Should be able to make something out of that! I grabbed a couple of empty wine bottles to figure out the spacing, measured the shelf where the rack would sit, and through trial and error, found the right dimensions. I whacked the boards to length, then took another cut as some proved to be too long. (Good thing they weren’t too short, since my lumber supply was to be limited to what was on hand.)

I wanted the rack to hold six bottles in a row; the finished rack held five. I wanted the rack to have space for eighteen bottles; the finished one holds twenty-five. That’s what happens when you don’t make or follow a plan; what you get is something strictly utilitarian, unconventional, and quite different from what you had in mind.

That’s kind of what my life has been like; no plan, no great goal, no clue how to get to a destination that I had not defined. I just kept moving forward, making the best of the situations and resources around me, and now in my seventies I can look back and see that it was a life. There was, of course, a plan. It was God’s plan, laid out before the beginning of creation, to guide me, His image-bearer, to live for Him, doing whatever came to my hand the best I could.

“For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.” Jeremiah 29:11 (ESV)

“Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.” Psalms 139:16 (ESV)