As he looks back on his long life, Jayber Crow, the main character in Wendell Berry's novel, reflects on how God's guidance and providence often catch us by surprise.

I can't look back from where I am now and feel that I have been very much in charge of my life …. I have made plans enough, but I see now that I have never lived by plan …. Nearly everything that has happened to me has happened by surprise. All the important things have happened by surprise. And whatever has been happening usually has happened before I had time to expect it …. And so when I have thought I was in my story or in charge of it, I really have been only on the edge of it, carried along. Is this because we are in an eternal story that is happening [only] partly in time?