ethoughts weekly- Issue 170

July 17, 2007

A Day Late and a Dollar Short

“A Day Late and a Dollar Short” is a phrase I never really liked. It comes to mind now that I’ve come up short on ethoughts weekly. I've come up short as I’m late again in sending it out. I would love to blame it on the summer time schedule I’ve put into play, or chaos, and tensions. But all that could require explanations that I’m not quite prepared to admit or expound on. Most of which seems unknown to me also. Life is moving very fast, and I'm not even that busy.

I was thinking about being confronted with bad news that one can’t control, this week, well, because I was. And I was wondering if we are supposed to, in “the big scheme of things”, be “proactive” or “roll with it”. It’s like I’ve been thinking these two philosophies compete for supremacy within my faith-based worldview, but I’m willing to admit, they may not. I'm probably way off base, but my formative religion education influenced my tendencies which have in turn been dictating my thought patterns. Do you experience this?

The proactive approach takes the bad news by the horns and tries to turn lemons into lemonade, usually by some sort of hands on squeezing process, if you will. The roll with it approach backs off, commits things more entirely to prayer and petition, and a wait and see manner. To me, it’s boiled down to this sort of thing, two approaches. Both seem fraught with pros and cons.

I won’t tell you the details of the particular situation I found myself in until later, because it hasn’t resolved. I plan to keep you posted though, as things progress. But I will tell you- I was proactive. Doors did open. It seem, possibly, I could see God blessing my squeezing of lemons, but I hesitant to read too much into it. People read a lot into things, and forecast situations to suit themselves. We make just about anything into tealeaves if given the chance, You can quote me on that. Just don't quote me that it's a good idea.

When we come up a day late and a dollar short, will it be because we did too little or too much? That balance is the hardest to find. I don’t find these answers easy to find. I wish I did. I wish I had the magic formula to tell you today. I wish I had the secret. Life is really humbling I think. We never have it figured out. The next bump will teach us we have no idea what we are doing, and a lot of things are out of our control.

The only thing I can tell from my recent experience is that which ever way we are supposed to handle the bumps we encounter, we can't interpret those bumps and all of the outcomes hitherto as conclusive signs of divine blessing. The bigger picture still looms. The pieces fit in a way of which we aren't aware, on the conclusions we jump to are just rafts on quicksand sometimes. Better to say, "I don't have it all figured out, but I'll try to the best I can, until I know better." Then when better comes along, we won't have been wrong about life or God that whole time, we'll only have been wrong about our tiny vantage point of the world, and that, my friends, is all very forgivable.

I was praying with my daughter, and I was thanking God for loving us even though we must look like tiny ants compared to him. She latched on to this concept, and inquired about it right away. I told her because God made everything, he is bigger than everything, and he’s bigger than all our problems too. And yet he is small in the sense that he knows all about each one of us, and he became a man called Jesus once. She was in awe about it, but seemed to already know about it too, in some part of her that is very connected to her Creator. The still yet unspoiled part. He knows we come up a day late and a dollar short on a regular basis, and he still likes us. Whether we are squeezing the heck out of the lemons of our life, and looking for sugar, and spoon anywhere we can find it, or we're praying, waiting, and looking for signs and wonders, he's still looking at us, and he's smiling. I know for sure he is. I've finally figured that out. God is not a person, so he does that sort of thing. That is the thing for which I’m the most grateful.

Lisa DeLay

©2007