God's Forgiving Plan

I’ve always had the vision and mechanical ability to follow blueprints and diagrams to successfully assemble or repair things. Throughout High School my schedule was full of shop and arts classes including three years of mechanical drawing. One year was architectural drawing where I designed and drew a complete house. In the shop classes we had to draw out our plans before starting any project, then follow that plan to completion. I was well on my way to becoming what I wanted to be until it came to higher education when my great lack of math skills along with poor English and reading skills put the brakes on higher education. I did get some time in on trade school training where I landed a good job as a detail draftsman with a nationally known company. A detail draftsman takes the concept doodling of design engineers and makes orderly sense of it all with pencil and rule. Well, the Vietnam Conflict put the skids on all of that and I traded in my pencil for a box full of tools used to work on aircraft for four years. I can’t complain about my life though because I’ve faired well with the skills I started with and over the years I’ve self educated and improved greatly the weaker parts of my childhood education. At this point in life I feel blessed and somewhat rewarded with the work I do today. Because my life has been so diversified all my learned skills are now being employed in my day-to-day activities, something I truly had never expected or had planned for. But, I do believe some divine intervention and planning has been applied.
One rainy afternoon while driving along one of the main streets of town, taking all those extra precautions necessary when the roads are wet and slick, his daughter, Aspen, spoke up from her relaxed position in the back seat. “Dad, I’m thinking of something.” This announcement usually means she had been pondering some fact for a while and was now ready to expound all that the six-year-old mind had discovered. He was eager to hear so asked, “What are you thinking?” She then just let it out, “The rain is like sin and the windshield wipers are like God wiping our sins away.” After the chill bumps raced up his arm he responded, “That’s really good Aspen.” Then his curiosity broke in and wondering just how far his daughter could go with this revelation he asked, “Do you notice how the rain keeps on coming? What does that tell you?” Aspen didn’t hesitate one moment with her answer, “We keep on sinning and God keeps on forgiving us.”
[Ephesians 1: 3-14] Through further education and understanding of the Scriptures, Aspen will come to know how and why God keeps on forgiving us for our sins. It’s all in a plan designed by God, even before the foundation of the earth was laid. Jesus was and is a great part of the plan. God sent His son as a messenger with the Good News of the plan of salvation for mankind. (John 14: 1-11) Jesus knew the plan and brought it to man without secret or mystery. We had no hope, no salvation, until there was Jesus. We will all die in our sins, but in Jesus we have hope and the grace of God will grant us salvation. Why did Jesus give His life for you and I? Because God’s plan demands sacrifice (life’s blood) for the atonement of disobedience (sin). The blood of unwilling animals was only temporary, but the blood, which willingly flowed from the perfect life of Jesus, for the sins of mankind, was accepted by God. The way is open for all who believe and are baptized in the name of Jesus to be adopted and loved by God, forever.