Thunderstorms and comebacks

We got our little swimming party in last night. We swam for almost an hour and by the time the thunderstorm moved in, we were all pretty hungry anyways. I personally had a great time. It was fun splashing around, racing back and forth, and throwing TB about 10 feet in the air! Not all got wet. Some entertained themselves by playing cards or toying with the cat. We had 15 there, if my count is correct, which is a pretty good number to start a year off with. I enjoyed hearing about everyone’s first day of school. It’s interesting to me to hear the differences in response between the sixth graders and the Seniors. This year is off to a good start.

While some entertained themselves playing cards, Risk, playing with Tracy’s cell phone rings, and soccer (Autumn, I know you can’t do that on a regular basis!), quite a few of us were gathered around the TV watching the Olympics. It’s funny that everyone is an expert on everything when it comes Olympic time every four years! I know, I’m guilty of it myself so I can’t point fingers. I just lump myself in there with the rest of the world and laugh at the whole lot of us. Anyways, Paul Hamm seemed to be the focus of everyone’s attention last evening. It seemed for a while that he was going to challenge for the win all the way through the end, then it happened. He was on the vault making his run and everything went great until the landing, which, if you saw it, had to have been embarrassing. He ended up stumbling backwards and in trying to catch himself, fell into the judges table! Well, he all but looked like he was going to hang up his hat and be done and the TV commentators had written him off as well. But there were two more rotations and everyone else had to finish. Paul killed both his last two elements and his competition made little mistakes that added up to little deductions that brought the field back together. Hamm pulled it out by 0.012 of a point! That’s insane! Only in the Olympics!

Proverbs 19:3 says, “A man’s own folly ruins his life, yet his heart rages against the LORD”. I went through a stage in life where every time something went wrong, I would announce, “It’s not my fault”. This stage didn’t last long because my mom got tired of it really quickly. To this day, though, I struggle placing blame, or at least reassuring myself that the problem, no matter what it is, doesn’t lie with me. If we’re all honest, this is something that affects each one of us. I’m sure you’ve heard people question and even blame God for the bad things that happen to them in life. “If God were a loving God, then [insert bad event] wouldn’t have happened”! Lot’s of variations of this conversation have occurred, but not very often to you hear people say, “You know, if I hadn’t done/said [insert stupid deed/statement] this probably wouldn’t have happened”. We’re always so quick to place blame that we can see that many times we’re products of our own devices. We get what we pay for, we reap what we sow. There’s no quick fix to this problem however. We must be humble in our lives to know when we’re wrong and when we need to fess up to what we screwed up. Even though it’s hard, God promises to exalt the humble and give that person grace. It’s that grace that allows us to get through life without having to prove ourselves at every turn. We can rest in it. Remember: when you point fingers, there’s three pointing back at you.

Later…