A Plan That Actually Works

By David Bragg

    In 1923 Otto Schnering came up with a plan to promote his new chocolate bar, Baby Ruth. He settled on a candy drop. A pilot was recruited for a plane, complete with the Baby Ruth logo, to perform some trick flying over Pittsburgh. As crowds gathered and curiosity rose hundreds of candy bars with little parachutes attached began falling from the plane. What happened next was not part of Schnering's plan. Office workers reaching dangerously out of windows trying to catch the candy. Children ran into the streets to catch or retrieve their prizes. And when some of the parachutes failed to open people were struck on the head and car windshields were broken by falling bars. Drivers, taking their eyes off the road, looked up instead as they crashed into other cars (The Memory Palace; Mental Floss).
    There are other seemingly good ideas that failed to come off exactly as planned (remember the Ford Pinto?). Unlike mere mortals, when God comes up with a plan, He is always successful in making it work. Isaiah said it best when he said that God’s word “shall not return to Me void, But it shall accomplish what I please, And it shall prosper ...” (Isaiah 55:11).
    God has a plan that includes you. We should feel confident in conforming to the New Testament plan and design of Christ’s church. It is a kingdom of servants, joyfully serving their Lord and Master while sharing their hope with the lost. That is God’s plan.  Any plan of human origin is bound to have problems, but God’s plan actually works.

- David Bragg serves as one of the ministers at the Northwest Church of Christ in Greensboro, NC and is co-editor of BulletinGold. He may be contacted through the congregation's website: http://www.nwchurchofchrist.com/ or his blog: http://davidbragg.blogspot.com/