Whose plans always come together?

“I LOVE it when a plan comes together” was the classic line you would hear near the end of every episode of the mid-1980’s show The A-Team.

Despite later discovering it was in fact not a reality show, and perhaps a little far-fetched sometimes - well, most of the time - it was still captivating for me as a young teenager (and millions of other people).

For those who have no idea what I am talking about, the show was about four Vietnam veterans who had been framed for a crime they didn't commit, and were on the run from the military police.

Each week they would discover some innocent people facing a bad person’s plan and find their first conflict-resolution attempt resulted in them being captured and imprisoned in a garage or warehouse, which handily happened to contain a broken down car or truck, a load of welding gear and a scrapyard full of junk.

They would then use their hour or so imprisonment to miraculously transform the junk into an armour-plated flying submarine thingy that would enable them to free themselves from their captivity, catch the bad guys and redeem the oppressed.

After this miraculous resolution, their leader, Hannibal, would come out with his catchphrase, everyone would laugh and marvel at his top-rate planning, credits would roll, and we’d wait expectantly for the next episode.

As I have grown up, life has revealed that things don’t always work out like they did in all 97 A-Team episodes.

Bad people are not always stopped, innocent people do not always get freed, cars can rarely be fixed in an hour and spare parts usually need to be orderedand cost more than the car!

But the phrase “I love it when a plan comes together” still triggers something in me.

When something doesn’t quite work out the best it should I wonder: if only I had planned better would the results have been better?

Would my family function better, would my workplace be a better environment, would my finances be more stable, would more people be freed from oppression, would more ‘bad guys’ be stopped, would I have created an armour-plated flying submarine thingy that could save the day? The answer is probably ‘yes’ (apart from the last one).

Planning and working hard on solutions is a good thing to do and I passionately believe the Bible calls us to plan and invest our best for God in everything we do.

However, I also believe there is a greater truth we need to grab hold of tighter.

The Bible's book of Proverbs says to “trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your