What Now? What Now? What Now?




I Chronicles 14:13-15

13. And the Philistines yet again spread themselves abroad in the valley.
14. Therefore David enquired again of God; and God said unto him, Go not up after them; turn away from them, and come upon them over against the mulberry trees.
15. And it shall be, when thou shalt hear a sound of going in the tops of the mulberry trees, that then thou shalt go out to battle: for God is gone forth before thee to smite the host of the Philistines.

How many times have we asked or heard that question, what now?, following an upset of our plans or an unexpected event in our lives? We had placed so much faith and confidence in what we thought was to be a certainty that we gave no thought of its failure—no plan B. We invested our all into it: our time, our emotions, even great resources. After carefully looking at what we thought was to be we could see no logical way the results could be any thing other than what we expected. It seemed obvious and inevitable. We could not conceive there were others, any one, who might see it differently, much less desire it if it could be so.

Then we awake one morning and our plans, hopes and dreams, all our efforts, even prayers, gone—vanished, whisked away in the night as if by a thief leaving no trace of possibility of what just the day before seemed assured. We stand in the silent vacuum created by its disappearance in utter shock—speechless! At first we refuse to believe. Slowly, our senses return and we find it very difficult to accept the obvious reality. We begin to question. What? Why? How? And finally, we come to: What now?

Realizing we have made no contingency plans, panic begins to set in. While still trying to grasp the new reality, our thoughts are confused with what do we do now. We know there is no changing the outcome. Somehow, we must get through this, but how? What now?

When we find ourselves asking that recurring question in life, only One possesses the wisdom Who will see us through. It is to Him we must go afresh each and every time and every single day of our lives regardless of the victory or failure of its last. We must learn to listen for the sound of going in the tops of the mulberry trees.