Hooper, Hooper, and Solomon…no, not the law firm

“You’re gonna need a bigger boat.”  That is one of the more famous lines from a movie that has haunted me since my childhood.  It’s why I won’t go swimming in the ocean.  You might recognize the quote from Chief Brody in the movie “Jaws” as he discovers the behemoth shark that has been feasting on swimmers off the coast of Amity Island.  “That’s a 20 footer,” says Matt Hooper the shark expert.  “25” responds Quint, the boat’s captain.  It is at this point where you realize that planning was not high on the list of priorities for this expedition to kill the shark.  After all, Hooper knew it was an exceptionally large shark based on his examination of the remains of the first victim.  If he was the shark expert he claimed to be, he would have extrapolated the size of the bites and from there determined the length of the shark.  You might also remember the scene where vandals have painted a huge shark fin on the Amity billboard.  Hooper is quick to point out that it is anatomically correct.  In other words, it is a massive great white shark.  But here they are in a 40-foot boat, in the deep blue, hunting a 25-foot fish with…enormous jaws.  The mathematician might say that the boat to shark ratio is less than optimal.

If you think about it, you really shouldn’t blame Hooper though.  People can be notoriously poor planners, if they plan at all.  When they do plan, too often they think those plans are solid gold.  And if you are anything like me, you know that things rarely play out like they are planned.  But we try nonetheless.

It doesn’t take a lot of work to find those in our past who planned for things to go one way, only to have them go another.  This week I want to introduce you to another Hooper whose plan did not go as well as he thought it would.  This Hooper’s first name is William, and he was a signer of the Declaration of Independence.  William was a North Carolinian who has been called the “prophet of independence” because he wrote a letter to a friend in which he stated that the colonies were soon going to establish a new constitution built on the ruins of British rule.  During the American Revolution, like many of his compatriots, the British took revenge on him by destroying his two homes.  As a result, he became separated from his family and he was forced to flee into the countryside.  Traveling through the woods and swamps, he contracted malaria from which he suffered the remaining eight years of his life.  He planned on his circumstances improving with the American victory, but instead, they got worse.  He was disliked by the Loyalists because of his anti-British sentiments, and disliked by the patriots because he refused to enforce reprisals against the Loyalists after the British were defeated.  He went from a prophet of independence to a partner in impecuniosity.     Things just didn’t work out like he thought they would.  But then things rarely do.

Matt and William succumbed to the saying, “The best laid plans of mice and men can still go wrong”.  Robert Burns might have written the basis of that statement in 1785, but it hardly originated with him.  Solomon recorded in Proverbs 16:9 that man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps.  Matt, William, and Robert may have approached the problem of planning not working out because, well, things don’t always work out.  But Solomon had a different idea.  He believed that though there existed an element of human planning, God, through his divine purpose, was guiding the whole outcome.  That may be hard to let sink in because we want to feel in-control.  We take the time to work out the carefully crafted details, and now we want things to go the exact way we planned.  And all along God is compassionately saying, yes, make your plans, but know that it is I who directs your steps.

I am thankful for the Matts and Williams of the world.  They give me hope that I am not the only one who believes my planning is good and solid (maybe not gold though), only to see how wrong I was.  I’ve lived through thousands of days worth of plans, and can honestly say that relatively few ended how I originally envisioned they would.  I can also honestly say that I am not disappointed because things didn’t work out like I thought they would, because as we have already seen, things rarely do.