The God of "Plan B"

God of Plan B

I was just thinking today of all the instances in the Bible where the person who should have been chosen for an inheritance, or a certain position, or whatever (that sounded very scholarly, didn’t it? Lol) – was bypassed and the less likely person was chosen.

Think of the 3 Patriarchs; Abraham’s first son, Ishmael, was not the line that the Covenant passed through, but his second son, Isaac. Then Isaac’s firstborn, Esau, was not the one the Covenant passed to, but Jacob. The Patriarchal line ended with Jacob, but you would have to admit if not the covenant, then certainly God’s favor was with Jacob’s twelfth son, Joseph. Moses was an orphan and a murderer, but God chose him. I think this is an interesting pattern in the scriptures. Look who God chose to be the king of Israel. David was so far down the line of brothers that he didn’t even show up for Samuel to consider – yet that was whom God had in mind for the position. Don’t forget that we weren’t even the first people who were chosen to hear the Gospel. According to Paul, the Gospel was to the Jews first and then to the Gentiles. Hello, we are Gentiles, so we were even the unlikely recipients of God’s redemptive plan.

You might ask what all this means. Am I just trying to bring you down and remind us of how lowly and undeserving we are? Well, yes – in a way. I think nothing in God’s holy word happened by coincidence. There must be a reason that the “ugly duckling” is always receiving God’s blessing.

I think the most obvious lesson from these stories in the Bible is that even though Jesus is God’s “only begotten Son” and the rightful heir to EVERYTHING – the Father has also called us His children, and He wants us to know that the inheritance and the benefits of the Covenant are also ours to claim as step-sons and daughters of His. The other nugget of Truth that I get from all of these unlikely people being favored in the Kingdom, is that God is the God of second chances. He is the God of new birth, of regeneration. He is the God of the disenfranchised, the disinherited. He is the God of the clean slate. He is the God of plan B, and plan C, and plan D, and plan E, and so on and so on and so on…. He is the God of never giving up. As I think back over my lifetime, I am obviously the Poster Child of Plan Bs and Plan Cs, etc. That’s why God is my God. He has taken all of the wrong turns in my life and instead of leaving me totally lost; He has directed me back onto His road. He is the God of finding your way back home. He is the God of fresh starts. He is the God of new life. The God who bought me back out of slavery when I had nothing to offer… He is my God. He is the God of Plan B.