Don’t you just hate those days when nothing seems to go right?  Maybe you aren’t feeling your best, or you paid a bill late, or the kids are driving you nuts, or you get out of work late, or you are stuck by a train for twenty minutes, or you forget to pack your kids’ lunch, or you have nothing for dinner, or the washing machine breaks and sends a flood of soapy water everywhere, or the house is a mess and you’ve been trying to clean it since last week, or everyone and everything needs your attention and you just want to throw in the towel and run away from it all?

You can’t fool me – I can see all of you nodding your heads!  Of course we’ve ALL had one of those days.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could always have a clean house, always have the laundry and dishes done, always have enough money for what we wanted to buy, always have everything we needed to make everyone happy?

Life just doesn’t work that way, does it?

It made me think 🙂

The world was perfect for Adam and Eve before the whole apple episode.  In the stage production of the show, “Children of Eden” by Stephen Schwartz, Adam and Eve are living the perfect life as the chorus sings:  “And their love was perfect … And the day was perfect … And the next was perfect … And the next … was perfect … And the day after that … And the day after that … Each one perfect as could be.”  It sounds wonderful, doesn’t it?  And maybe that’s how we’d all like our days to be.  Perfect.  But when things are going well for us, don’t we all tend to start whining, “I’m bored!”  So we start looking for more.  We start looking beyond the norm of our melancholy lifestyles.  In “Children of Eden” Eve looks beyond the boring perfect normal and believes that God left a tiny spark of fire in her from His creation of her that is making her fingertips itch to find out what other things exist.  Like serpents.  And apple trees.

In one of my favorite movies, “While You Were Sleeping” Sandra Bullock is talking to Jack, the brother of a guy who is in a coma and who Sandra is supposedly engaged to.  But the coma guy doesn’t know about the engagement while meanwhile Jack and Sandra are falling in love – confusing I know – but a good movie.  Any ways – Jack is trying to find happiness in his life while making everyone around him happy and he tells Sandra what she needs to do. Sandra says to him, “And what are you, Jack, the happiness guru?”  Ha!  Raise your hand if you’ve ever taken a day to try and please everyone.  Hello Happiness Guru!

Now let me share with you another movie – “Bruce Almighty” where Jim Carrey takes over the job of being God, played by Morgan Freeman.  In one scene he is dealing with hearing all the voices of prayers from people as they pray and ask God for requests.  It made me think 🙂 of how God must go crazy with us asking him for stuff all the time.  Jim Carrey is overwhelmed with the needs of all the praying souls and tries desperately to answer all the incoming prayers.  He tries filing them, using sticky notes, getting a website to organize them and … well … if you want you can view the clip yourself:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0cG11lTS1E

Jim Carrey finally defaults all the prayers to the same answer – “Yes.”  So guess what happens?  Everyone gets what they ask for – and they still aren’t happy.

So what is our lesson here?

I think we need to sit back and thank God for those crazy imperfect days.  Why?  Because there is no such thing as a perfect day – both because of the bite of an apple, and because you just can’t make everyone happy all the time.  You can never have things perfect.  And those bad days?  Well, they test us, they teach us things, they help us discover what’s beyond, they help us grow and they help us appreciate the days that may get close to perfect.  In “Children of Eden” Adam sings about how they once had a garden full of all they could eat, but Eve responds, “But it seems the fruit our own hands grow, somehow tastes twice as sweet.”

It can’t all be good and it can’t all be perfect.  If it was, we’d all get bored and itchy in our seats as we looked for something new and different.  So let’s thank God for when things are going well – too often we forget to say that when times are good.  And when the day (or week or month) starts going awful, remember that God said He would never leave us.  He’ll help us through.  The path may just lead to a wonderful destination.  In the meantime, we can trust that God has us just where we belong and however rough the road, we will arrive stronger, more faithful, more appreciative, and more blessed.

I think it’s snack time now – I’m hungry!

I’m thinking … an apple!

Yum.

Here’s to … beyond!

Just Laurel

James 1: 2-8, 12   Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.  Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.  If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you.  But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind.  That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord.  Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do.  Blessed is the one who perseveres under trial because, having stood the test, that person will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him.