Is this the end, or the start of something new?

I don't know if there is a law--written or otherwise--that would encourage the starting of something like a blog to coincide with the near onset of a new adventure, a new phase in life, etc. It just seems to me like you should take on such an endeavor (creating a blog ... obviously I see this as quite a big deal) not until the start of a new chapter in your life; you don't start a few paragraphs before the current chapter ends - it seems incomplete, unbalanced.

Maybe I just made up that rule myself. In any case, the point I wish to make is that I'm not going to observe it. Logically, it makes much more sense for me to start this blog in about a month from now. Now why is that? Well, I'm glad I asked ...

I write this sitting in "my" bedroom at a friend's home in Hong Kong after spending nearly a year in mainland China. In two days I'll be flying from here to Australia. By the end of the coming week I'll fly again to Papua New Guinea. A little over two weeks later I'll be back in the States, and then by July I'll have reached what I refer to (by default?) as home ... Arizona. Wouldn't I do well to start the blog once I've settled there? Or maybe I'm the only one who thinks that way.

What happens after that? Well, I plan to stay in the States through to the end of August, and then most likely go back to China (back to Binzhou, to be exact) to teach at the university there, at which point I'll make all of my friends call me "Professor." ("Mr. Patton is my father ... please, just call me Professor." That's how I expect it to play out.) But I've learned enough to know that things don't always go the way you plan ("The mind of man plans his way, the LORD directs his steps") which means there's not only a chance my friends won't call me Professor, but a chance I may actually not become one.

So if things don't pan out in Binzhou for next year (for clarification, I always think of the "year" as beginning in August and ending in May ... I'm not sure what to make of the other two months) I could potentially stay in Tucson for a year or maybe come back here to Hong Kong. In any case I don't think I'll know for sure until August rolls around. And that's okay. I know God wasn't any less in control a year ago than he is today, but I do acknowledge it more now than I did then. All that just to say, I don't have to worry about what I'll be doing.

There's a verse I've thought of quite often over the past couple of months. It's quite popular; if you've been to church you've probably heard it before: "'For I know the plans that I have for you,' declares the LORD, 'plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope'" (Jeremiah 29:11). Usually when we look at that verse we focus on the second half, the kinds of plans God has for us. It makes sense, they sound pretty good. But that's not what has meant most to me. Instead, it's the words, "I know the plans I have for you ..." or even just "I know ...." God has a plan for my life and I do not as yet know what it is; I would say none of us really do, except in a more general sense. I don't know what he has planned for me. I don't know where I will be next year or what I'll be doing. But God knows. He said it. "I know the plans I have for you ...." It's enough that he knows. I don't have to.