Too Cool for School

God works in mysterious ways. That is such a cliche, but so true. Like my friendship with Shirley, my neighbor. My parents met her when she first moved in next door to me, because they were waiting for the tow-truck to pick up my car. (I was at school.) That gave me the courage to meet her, and she instantly became my friend. We couldn't be more different, it seems, but maybe we're a lot alike. We're both single, we both like eating. I'm sure there's more. At any rate, I didn't mean for all of this to happen, but now we're friends, she goes to church with me, and she took me and all of our small group to dinner tonight, which was not my plan when I invited her to go with me. Sometimes I think I'm going to bless her life and she ends up blessing mine. Shirley had a cd with some songs on it that I hadn't heard in a few years. One of them was TobyMac, "Irene", and she kenw all of the words. There is a line in it, "Blessed is she, Irene, who seeks my face." And Shirley yelled it out. Then she started car dancing (which reminds me of Lydia Jackson!)...then I started car dancing because she was. It was so fun to hang out with Shirley, who's 18 years older than I am but makes me see how truly uptight I've been about stuff that doesn't matter.
On the other side of God's blessings are the blessings that seem like curses. These blessings come in packages like "failure", "loss" and "disappointed hopes". All of the above came to our theatre group this weekend when we (who'd gone to state in One-Act Play last year) didn't advance past the first round of competition. There's a lot to say about how unfair it is, that the opinion of one person and their theatre preferences are what really determine who gets to advance. Only two schools from each district move to the next round. And of course, it's a bit painful that round two of the four-round competition is going to be held at our school. It's even worse that the kids actually did awesome--the best we've ever seen them. But I know--I just know that God is going to bless us in this. I can't possibly see how. That play was our lovechild! Anybody who's ever been in the playoffs of any competition can probably feel our pain. Please keep this in mind. In two weeks, I will have something good to tell.

This is what we've been studying in church:
"What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him..." Philippians 3:8,9

posted by Heather at 3/27/2006