The Break: Is it all in His Plans?

I tried hard to find the last song to conclude the Break series. I scanned through many of my playlists and even thought of reflecting through one of the many classics like Imagine but this didn’t appear to me to be the right tune to finish of this trilogy of reflections.

Until I came across my PJ Morton playlist. Here, I found the perfect song; All In His Plans.

I listen to this song sparingly during this quarantine period, why you may ask?

I see this as one of those precious songs that you don’t want to wear out, like your favourite type of shoes. You don’t wanna get accustomed to the melody and eventually get tired of it.

I cried, smiled and nodded my head to this song multiple times as I reflected on the state of our world and my own internal conflicts. All in His Plans comes across as an extremely emotionally charged song; a raw conversation of a Christian with their God.

This song features colossal Gospel singers like Le’Adria Johnson and the female duo Mary Mary, whom you may know for performing ‘’This is my exodus’’ and ‘’Shackles’’ respectively (I highly recommend both). Mrs Johnson and Mary Mary powerful voices manage to articulate flawlessly the pain and frustration of seeing the world in front of you collapsing, that feeling of being lost that all of us at one point end up facing during our lifetime.

This song can be easily divided into three sections. The first consists of the singers questioning of God and his intention, that despite their faith they struggle to understand why all the tragedies and pain happen. This smoothly leads to the first chorus where the singers affirm their faith despite the underlying sense of doubt in their voices. This is followed by the second verse where the singers tell themselves what they believe of reality despite their circumstances pointing to the exact opposite, this hinges on the idea of God having everything under control. This once again leads to the chorus, which differs from the first one, as it projects more affirmation and belief in the tone of the singers, this is especially noticed by how the lead singer sings the ‘’I know’’ that ushers us into the chorus in the first place. The whole song builds up to the bridge, where the singers really express their internal conflicts with their belief which is concluded with the following lines:

I just have to keep on believing And I have to know it's in his plan

When we are faced with so much tragedy and pain, it is really hard to know what to do to move forward. And what we’ve seen in this roller-coaster of a year is exactly that, uncertainty.

Why is all this happening? What can I do to change the situation?

It’s natural to desire to fix everything, but sometimes the best fix for someone is the acknowledging that we are limited as human beings and that just being able to cry out our pain is enough. As the first section of this song shows us. Following that, we can be lead to the realisation that we cannot just sit in our tears forever. This is a bit like those movie scenes where the main female character goes to the bathroom to cry and after that, she cleans her self up and puts a fresh layer of mascara on. We need to get back up on our feet with the knowledge that something better awaits us, and as we await those days we can choose to rejoice in the ‘’trivial’’ things we take for granted daily, like having shelter, food and loved ones. Even when the voices of doubt come in, we stand firm, remembering that there is a purpose to life and despite all that happens, the purpose will prevail.

For Christians like PJ Morton, Le’Andria Johnson, Mary Mary and myself, this starts by rejoicing in reaffirming that God is and always will be in control.

So there you have it, a quick reflection on the times we live in through the lenses of three different artists. I hope this series was able to bring across a different perspective to you and that you enjoyed the songs listed in this series not only from the creative lenses but also by how they can be applied to our very own thinking.