Then I came back down the mountain and put the tablets in the ark I had made, as the LORD commanded me, and they are there now.

Deuteronomy 10:5 NIV

While Moses was on the mountain in the presence of God, he received two stone tablets that God had written the law upon. This law would feed Israel’s ethical exchanges, but the people became so restless, rebellious, and self-absorbed that they forced Aaron to build them golden calves to worship.

Moses saw these calves as he came down from the mountain carrying the tablets that held the law of God. His nation was living recklessly. They were worshipping the gods of their own creations. So Moses threw the tablets to the ground in anger and they crumbled at his feet.

This was not how the plan was supposed to unfold. The plan had deliverance from slavery, a hard journey through the wilderness to the Promised Land—to a future of freedom and fellowship with God. Their borders would be protected. Their fields would produce crops. Their children would be taught about the God who delivered them from Egypt. That was the plan.

Instead, Moses looked at his people worshipping and dancing around golden calves. The plan was shattered and was in crushed pieces on the ground.

We all know this feeling well. We’ve all been in situations where our plans didn’t turn out how they were supposed to. Things that happen that we can’t control, and the clashing of competing agendas rear their heads. Then, our plans slip out of our hands—or we threw them down to the ground. If we’re honest, we do this often because we cannot believe that life and other people wouldn’t protect our plans or protect us in our attempts to fulfil our plans.

Moses teaches us that when plans haven’t worked out like we wanted them to, we still serve a God of such abundant grace that He makes sure that we have two new stones available to us. We don’t have to waste our lives standing over our crushed, shattered plans. God is waiting for and expecting us to grab two new stones and meet Him where it all began.

Plans don’t stop where they fail. We must use failure as a part of the plan. Failures don’t frustrate God’s grace, so our reaction must become different. When we survive a season when our plans don’t unfold as we imagined them, we have to mature from that place. We should emerge from that place and start asking different questions. We shouldn’t ask whose fault it is. We should ask how we could do better and what we should do next.

We cannot succeed without a plan. When we have the conviction to walk out our plans, even when our planning includes having a plan for when our plans have failed.