"Though the mind of a person plans his way," notes the writer of Proverbs 16:9, "the Lord directs his steps."  On the one hand, this seems to put us into a trap:  what happens to our capacity for choice?  On the other hand, it may be a comfort:  someone wiser than we helps us find the better way.  Which should--or can--it be?

     Think about a bird winging its way south for the winter.  Does anyone tell it to go?  Does anyone tell it when to go?  Many decades ago, I was backpacking through the remote Brooks Range of northern Alaska when I chanced upon a duck tending to its affairs in a tiny pond.  I did not expect to see this duck; given the relatively late date (August in the Arctic), I had assumed it and its companions would have been long gone by now.  The next morning, however, it was gone. 
     Somehow, it knew.  And it knew at just the right time.


     As do we.  We know when we are supposed to do things, we know when we are supposed to be a certain way.  Unlike the duck, however, we can choose not to be or do them.  We are more than instinct.  We have a choice.

     Consider the universe.  It steadily spins itself out under the umbra of its creator, gyrating, expanding, turning in on itself as it deepens the abundance of its form and ambiguity.  We little know where it will end up. We only know that it is going.

     As we do for our lives.  We only know that they are going, going somewhere, and going, in an odd way, everywhere, everywhere the universe can be, the universe of our spatiality, the universe of our hearts.

     So, yes, God directs our steps.  But he does so as an infinite God in an infinitely transforming universe.

     The possibilities are endless.