One of the most important lessons of life is advanced planning. He (or she) who does not plan ahead will live in dependence on those who do. The better we plan, the more flexibility and productivity we enjoy. 

Take a look at verses 1-3. Pay close attention to the penalty for working on the Sabbath. If you want or need a fire on the Sabbath, you prepare on the day and night before. If you don’t plan ahead, you get cold, you don’t cook your meals, you have no light to see, or you die. 

Proper planning prevents discomfort, hunger, unproductive evenings, and death. Plan ahead. 

Sunday evening is a good time to plan ahead for Monday and the coming week. It’s a good time to synchronize calendars with your family. If you have kids in school, it’s nice to know they have a project due on Friday so that you don’t have to spend all night Thursday running to Walmart for supplies and providing a bit more “guidance” than necessary. 

Laying out the week ahead of us and planning our rest, exercise, meals, and travel solves a number of problems before they arise. 

Planning ahead is freeing.

This is a good time to consider what matters most and what can be laid aside or rescheduled if necessary. The reality is that no plan works out exactly. This is where daily and weekly reviews are helpful. Come Monday evening and each evening thereafter, through the course of the week, evaluate what was accomplished and what needs rescheduling or discarding. Daily adjustments keep us focused and productive.

A weekly review is a good, honest look back at what went right, what went wrong, what was confused, and what was missing. We begin to see patterns and trends when we do this over time. We can improve the trend lines and reshape the patterns by developing habits of planning and execution.

There is a big difference between what we want to happen and what happens when we plan ahead. Wanting to accomplish something is incomplete without planning. Execution is incomplete without evaluation. 

We have heard that experience is the best teacher. This is not true. Evaluated experience is the best teacher. Sometimes we need a coach or mentor to help us with evaluative learning. Their good questions and life experiences empower us to accelerate our improvement.

How successful will you be today? This week? How successful do you want to be, and how will you plan ahead to make it so?

Take five minutes right now and examine your day. Seek God’s guidance regarding what matters most and what you need to do to accomplish your highest and best with the resources you have at hand. Take five minutes tonight to evaluate this day and to adjust and prepare for tomorrow. 

Your planning methodology is your playbook for a successful life. Light tomorrow’s fires tonight.

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I will go with God, who never fails and who loves helping failures like me and you, begin again more intentionally. 

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Our Father, you are the Perfect Planner. Empower me to learn from you and your words to us in the Bible. Empower us to learn from Moses in Psalm 90. Empower us to learn from Solomon in Proverbs. Empower us to learn from Jesus in the Gospels. Empower us to learn the lessons our lives are trying to teach us day by day and week by week. Amen.