Bad Week

It hasn’t been a good week. All Mondays seem a little hectic, but it was an unusually bleak Monday. Then the last two days haven’t gone so well either. It isn’t that it’s been anything big, or even that I’ve not flowed with the tide. It’s mainly been kind of annoying things. The A/C quit working in my room, but tonight’s cold front will solve that. And even Maggie, the smart board, just shut down today. I thought (only to myself), “Maggie, you’re almost brand new. You’re way too young to be going through menopause.”

Often, life just throws stuff at you, but seriously…when I thought about it, I just really wasn’t prepared very well for this week. I have a friend who periodically quotes his teacher mother saying, “If you fail to prepare, you prepare to fail.” There’s a lot of truth to that. And I could have done a better job at that this week.

Then, sometimes things happen that there’s no preparation for. Never, never—in our craziest imaginations could we have ever guessed. Situations change; people change. And there we are, staring into space and wondering: How in the world did I end of here?

There are common answers for that: “We live in a fallen world.” “People make choices.” But, sometimes those just don’t seem to work for me. So, there we are, dealing with where we are.

When the A/C quits, it’s easy to open the windows and prop the door. When Maggie quits, you can always manipulate the screen with the computer mouse. If only life were so easy—

It’s not.

So, we pray and we keep walking. We lean on friends and we keep walking. We read our Bibles and we pray and we pray and we pray. And we keep walking.

We walk, we pray because we trust in the One who is never caught off guard. God, very God, is always prepared. And that’s how we walk through the mess, through years, and eventually right into eternity—where a place is prepared for us.