Proverbs 16:8-9

The widow of Zarephath with a handful of meal was richer than Jezebel in the palace. "Great revenues without right" come with an invoice attached, and it always arrives. So beware the hair's-breadth deviation from the straight principle — the small rounding-up, the gray-area invoice, the "everyone does it" — because that hair's breadth is the gate the whole herd comes through. "Godliness with contentment is great gain" (1 Timothy 6:6); the math has never been updated.

Here is the whole chapter in one couplet, and one of the great balance-points of the Bible. Both halves are fully true. Man really devises — you plan, choose, will, and answer for it. And the LORD really directs — the outcome, the route, the timing, the interruptions. An old preacher set the two truths side by side in a sentence worth memorizing: man without his free will is a machine, and God without His unchangeable purpose ceases to be God — and He orders our will without breaking our liberty.

Scripture is a gallery of verse 9. Joseph's brothers devised a pit and a slave-caravan; God directed the steps to the throne of Egypt — "ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good" (Genesis 50:20). Young Saul devised a search for his father's donkeys; God directed the steps to a crown (1 Samuel 9–10). Saul of Tarsus devised arrests in Damascus; God directed the steps to a noon-day light and an apostleship. Even evil is kept within bounds, sometimes by being allowed to overreach — Pharaoh's decree against the babies put Moses inside Pharaoh's palace, and Pilate's spiteful placard published "THE KING OF THE JEWS" in three languages to the whole world (John 19:19–20).

So read verse 9 as a comfort, not a cage. Strangers may speak about providence; only the children love it. Devise your way — diligently, prayerfully, on paper if you like — and then hold the plan loosely and the Director tightly, because the detours are His handwriting too.