Part of the Plan

The Illusionist, which came out in 2006, is a story about a magician who uses his abilities to try to win back a girl he loves. That's the really short version... that's definitely not all there is to it, but I don't want to give away much of the story for those of you who haven't seen it. It's a really good movie and I definitely recommend it. It came out at the same time as another magician movie that had some bigger names in it, so it kind of got overshadowed. If you missed it at the time, it's not too late. But anyway!

In the movie, a lot of bad things happen. The main character, played by Edward Norton, appears to go through many trials. From an outside perspective, things do not really go his way.

However, toward the end of the movie, we learn that everything went according to his plan. Though things seemed bad on the surface, something much deeper was going on. Something that no one could have foreseen. Everything that happened was part of his plan all along.

I believe our lives can be like that. God knows the end result and uses circumstances that seem to us to be negative. We complain that God has forsaken us. We beg Him to help things go our way. We tell Him what we want with our lives and hope that He makes it happen. But we don't know the end. We don't know what He's doing to shape us into the people we were meant to be.

While it may appear to us like things are bad, we may later find that everything He was doing was done to create who we are now. And that's more important than anything we've been through.

Of course, not everything turns out for our good. But that's why we need to learn to live life for God and not for ourselves. We can always count on Him to glorify Himself through us if we allow Him to. It's not an easy thing to give up control, but it is much more fulfilling. When we stop praying selfish prayers and start praying "God, help me do whatever it is that would glorify You the most", He can begin a work in us that is far beyond what we could imagine for ourselves.