Isn't it difficult to manage all of the little things we have to do? Take this morning. My car needed a new clutch and I took it to the shop over the weekend. I called them to see if it is finished yet, which it is not. Today I need to stay late at work, so I thought it would work out perfectly to take this morning to pick up my car and make up my hours after work. But now, I still have to stay late at work, and will have to get my car another time, so I am sitting in my living room in the middle of the rug with my computer on my lap blogging, because I am overdue on this too. The house is messy and I need to pack lunch and pay my car insurance and all these other little irritating things that you just have to do sometime to get through this day to day life.
It has been beautiful outside though. Yesterday felt like heaven and Rob said it made him want to go to Disney World and stand in a long line. I went on a walk over the weekend. A slow long turn around Shank Park, and observed a proud father-to-be bluebird perched over his new house. He was so still and so focused on keeping an eye out, and faithfully guarding his post. I envy his singularity of purpose and the ability to put his body and mind in one place.
There is so much to do at work. I should just go in and not think about taking comp time. There are orders to send, letters to write, hotels to book, questions to anwer, books to edit, calls to make, and it just goes on and on.
And then I start thinking about big things. I think about God and what choices are right or wrong. I think about my friends and all that is going on in their lives and wonder what God is doing. I think about the fact that I am getting more critical and I have lower opinion of the human race than I used to. We are so messed up and make stupid decisions all the time.
But in the meantime there are good little things too, and I have to be careful not to miss them. My tulips are up and are promising to bloom if the rabbits don't eat them. My cousing Christy sent me a picture of her new little daughter dressed in a cow outfit that I sent as a gift and it made me laugh and laugh, and there is nothing like being tickeled by five children at a time with palm branches, and then watching them totally forget to sing...
And in the meantime, it is Holy Week. That is certainly a big thing to fit in among the little ones. The biggest, and the most easy to miss.
Maybe it is good that my car is not done and that I am not running all over central PA to pick it up and then get to work. Maybe it is good to be sitting on the floor in the middle of the rug and be thinking about little things and how, in the end, they come together to form the big ones.
But I should really go pack my lunch.
2 comments:
One of the authors we read down at St. John's (I confess I completely forget who. Locke, maybe?) made an interesting point about God's perspective vs. man's. To paraphrase, his point was basically that God doesn't really need categories. Those are a human invention. We name all small, furry, reddish animals "foxes," and when we see one, we refer to it as "a fox." God, however, sees millions of individual foxes, so when He looks down and sees one, He sees "Jerry the fox," not just any one. We humans use broad categories because we don't have the ability to keep everything in our heads all at once. God, on the other hand, can afford to do exactly that, and thus He looks at every facet of creation as if it is the only thing that exists at any point in time (on that last point, I'm no longer paraphrasing, but adding my own conclusion).
I think this relates to your post, because separating things into "big" and "little" things is something humans do that God doesn't have to. God could spend as much time as He likes on the story of your bluebird's life, and in fact He already has, even though you and I will never know all the details (at least not in this life). God still tells those stories, even though we can't actually hear them all.
I love that attention to detail. That's one of the things I love about the water droplets in the waterfall. It's easy for me to think of the waterfall as just a bunch of water pouring over a cliff. To God, though, each one of those droplets is numbered and has its place. The waterfall is thus a work of art more complicated and detailed (and hence more wonderful) than any painting or sculpture you or I could ever come up with, though this admittedly is not saying much in my case. ;)
And I think this is one of those things Lewis nailed in his literature; he added lots of little details that demonstrate God's care in creating things. Obviously, He's limited by the number of pages in his books, and the number of words in the English language, but he put all of these wonderful nuances into his stories that I find immensely captivating. His depictions of sin and salvation, of good and evil, and even just his wonderful imagination all make my heart leap as I read. The Great Divorce used to be my favorite, though Till We Have Faces (which I recently re-read for the first time since I totally didn't understand it at CHESS way back when) might have stolen the limelight. They're both amazing, and I'm flattered that my writing evoked some amount of parallel in your mind.
Thanks for posting. I moved my blog to blogspot because I kept getting complaints from my friends that they couldn't post comments anonymously (and apparently, they're all too lazy to just open accounts). Hannah Eagleson (who I'm pretty sure you know?) even commented by e-mail once. Ironic that I move back to blogspot and nobody comments.
In other news, I am excited about moving back to South Central PA. I've been in Maryland for about seven years now, and I'm pretty tired of it. Annapolis has its charms, but it's just not home. It is nice being only twenty minutes from the DC Metro, and thus having access to all those wonderful, free museums, but recently I haven't found the time to make it out there much. I will miss the National Gallery, though, and I'm still hoping to make it through the Holocaust Museum before I leave Maryland. Those things are still day-trippable (which is totally a word) from Hershey, though, so hopefully I won't be completely cut off. Maryland just isn't home, and I'm tired of moving every one or two years, and I'm tired of having friends constantly coming and going, and I'm ready to have a job that actually engages me and that has some higher purpose than filing papers (which is what I do at the moment). Molding kids' brains to get them to appreciate science or math or literature or writing fits the bill pretty well.
Anyway, thanks for your comment. It's nice to know somebody reads what I write on there, and thinks about it for a least a few minutes. You get a cookie.
I was reminded of this post this morning, when I was late to work yet again, mostly because of my own lazyness. It seems like the little things are so annoying, and take up time and effort that could be spent on bigger, seemingly more meaningful things. Yet, God reminds us that faithfulness in the little things (being on time, etc...) leads to bigger, more important things.
I was reminded of this verse in Luke 16:10
"One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much. 11If then you have not been faithful in the unrighteous wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? 12 And if you have not been faithful in that which is another's, who will give you that which is your own?
I don't know exactly what the moral of the story is, since meaningless little things can unnecessarily consume us. I guess we just need to look for the fruit of being faithful in the little things, and expectant for the big things that God is going to bring us.
Post a Comment