I think you may be misunderstanding the phrase “God has a plan.”
God does have a plan, a plan of salvation. As the prophet Jeremiah stated:
11 For I know well the plans I have in mind for you—says the LORD—plans for your welfare and not for woe, so as to give you a future of hope.
12 When you call me, and come and pray to me, I will listen to you.f
13 When you look for me, you will find me. Yes, when you seek me with all your heart,
14 I will let you find me—says the LORD—and I will change your lot; I will gather you together from all the nations and all the places to which I have banished you—oracle of the LORD—and bring you back to the place from which I have exiled you.
His plan for us is for our eternal happiness with Him. And when we seek Him with all our heart, He changes our lot from eternal death to eternal life.
The “plan” that you are talking of, when someone gets injured or we lose a loved one, for example, is a way of saying that God is with us in these moments; that we can be comforted knowing that “all things work together for the good, for those who love God and are called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28). It does mean that a terrorist of a deity sat on his throne and planned all the horrible things he will do to us.
I had a rather bad accident 4 years ago that mangled my left hand – lost my index finger, crippled my pinkie, etc. As a musician (piano, guitar, flute, harp) this was crushing!! In that moment, I had a small army of friends, family, and total strangers praying for me. My heart was miraculously calm through the long recovery and adaptation.
And I was encouraged to know that
God does indeed have a plan for me now, a plan that includes have a lifetime of deformity (small as it is), etc. In other words, He
knew that this injury would come in my lifetime; but it came as a result of both original sin (through which all suffering entered the world) and through a lifetime of choices that led to me using the table saw that day.
Did God PLAN my accident? No way. Did He ALLOW it – absolutely.
And what is His plan now for me, a musician, with a mangled hand? Beats me
But He has allowed me to keep much of my musical abilities, including playing the organ at mass! (Lord, help us all!) AND my school suddenly has become a magnet school for children with hand deformities! – fused fingers at birth, missing fingers, extra fingers, partial amputations!!! And there I am displaying my weird old hand without hesitation as I point to the board, etc. And there I am playing guitar with my students, and playing the piano while they sing… and the precious little ones with hand problems see that they don’t need to hide their deformities, nor are they necessarily limited in their abilities.
Now that is a grace of God! And a part of His plan.
His plan doesn’t limit me in the sense that I am being controlled. Rather, His plan puts limits on me the way gravity, or the laws of physics “control” me. That is, I can work with His plan for my eternal happiness, or I can work against His plan and end up in eternal death (kind of like working against gravity and jumping off a 10 story building insisting that I won’t be limited by somebody else’s law).
And prayer does change things. It changes us, first of all, by placing our focus on our reliance on God. And God does respond to our prayers – think of our Blessed Mother bringing her concerns to Jesus at the wedding at Cana. The good things are part of God’s plan as well!
I fear I’m making a mess with words here… But my point is that God does have a plan, and it is eternal in scope – all things in this life, good and bad, giving us opportunity to grow in faith and receive His gift of eternal life.
God bless you!
Gertie
