The future is not ours to control – it is God’s.  We are watching BBC’s Merlin as a family and there is really some pretty deep stuff in it.  I found it interesting that, in trying to prevent a horrible future, the characters often made choices that they would not have made if they had never seen a glimpse of a future that could come to pass.

Morgana was told that Emrys was both her destiny and her doom.  Naturally she felt a sense of foreboding, but she also somehow got the idea that she could prevent this fate.  She thus set out on a desperate quest to kill Emrys before he killed her.  She made decisions and set certain things into motion, not always favorable, by trying to control the future.  And she allowed herself to become filled with hatred for a man whose identity she did not even know.  That was where Morgana went wrong.  She went all “bad girl” and Merlin (who was Emrys), being a good fellow, opposed her when he never would have done so before.  She became consumed with avoiding her destiny and in doing so brought doom upon herself, just as the prophecy had foretold.

I sometimes wonder why we try so hard to be in control of things.  Perhaps it is a need to feel safe and secure, to make sure that we will be okay, that compels us.  The truth is, however, that the future is in God’s hands, and His alone.  Sometimes we try to make things go one way, but, in the end, all things follow God’s plan.  The created can’t help but answer to the Creator, no matter how hard they try to resist it.

“Do you not know? Have you not heard?….He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth, and its people are like grasshoppers….He brings princes to naught and reduces the rulers of the world to nothing. No sooner are they planted, no sooner are they sown…than he blows on them and they wither, and a whirlwind sweeps them away like chaff.” (Isaiah 40:21-24)  

We cannot control the future.  I do not say this to give a sense of futility or hopelessness.  Rather, this should be comforting, because God is good and He is in control.  Understand what I mean by saying we have no control over the future.  The outcome of things is in God’s hands and always has been.  Although He has given us choices, He wants us to choose Him.