ASKING THE RIGHT QUESTIONS
October 28, 2012
My favorite month is nearly over and heavens to Betsy if we aren’t about to enter into the holiday season again. This is getting ridiculous! Time flies by faster every year and I don’t have any idea what I’ve been doing with all of it. I mean I know I seem to be busy every day doing all kinds of things, but why is it that time rolls by so much faster now than when I was just as busy ten, fifteen or twenty years ago? Isn’t that the proverbial question of life?
One thing is for certain, having grown children, which sounds so much easier than having little ones running circles around your feet, doesn’t actually simplify life at all. At least not at the stage I am in right now. Every event has to be planned so much further in advance to give everyone time to voice an opinion and to get in the mood and to ask off work and to accommodate in-laws and friends and to work around school schedules. We used to just pack up and go! Or stay home and play games. Nothing like that happens anymore. Much deep, draining thought must go into every move we make these days. And even when my husband and I think about doing something on our own, when all the girls are off doing their own thing, we go through this routine:
Step One: Do we have the money to go somewhere overnight and make the next college payment? If the answer is yes, we go! (We have never answered yes to that question other than the times we want to visit the daughter who needs the college payment made.) So we move on to Step Two: Do we have the money for gas to go out somewhere for the day to explore nature and maybe eat lunch somewhere and make the next college payment? If the answer is yes, we go! (We have done this once.) If not we move on to
Step Three: Do we have the money for gas to go somewhere and take our lunch with us and make the next college payment? If the answer is yes, we go! (We have done this once.) If not we move on to
Step Four: Do we have the money for gas to go to McDonalds? If the answer is yes we move immediately on to
Step Five: After that process, do we have the energy to make such a dismal trip? If the answer is yes, we go have a burger. If no, we get in our jammies and stay home.
Most of the time we skip straight to Step Five and the jammies without any thought at all. Does this make us officially old? Or are we just broke and tired? I don’t know if that question will ever be answered, since by the time we are not broke and tired we will be either really old or dead. Cheery autumn thoughts brought to you by your neighborhood Doodler!
And here are some straight from God himself, through the apostle Paul. He has such a way with words of encouragement:
> “But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions–it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith–and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God–not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” Romans 2: 4-10.
Maybe my husband and I ought to be asking, “What good works should we go out and do today?” I bet God would provide the gas and energy for that!