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Can You Smell the Irony?

July 24, 2006 By Leave a Comment

How fitting that I wrote up that last post on changing plans this morning!

Just as I was about to head out the door to the office I got a call from the head of our local office here. He’s the guy that I had come up here to relieve.

“You better pack your bags. We may be sending you home today.”

OK, I thought. The company just spent a bunch of money to change my flight, which was originally scheduled to leave yesterday, had me go get a rental car. And now they want to send me home anyway?

“So do you want me to change my flight for one today?”

“Just call around and see what you can get out today, but don’t change your flight yet. We may need you to stick around. Call me and let me know what you can get.”

Sure. No problem.

I called the airline. Good news: there are still a couple seats left that would get me home tonight. Called back the office and let them know.

“We still don’t know for sure. I’ll call you once I know.”

So I wait. Tick. Tick. Tick.

Eventually he calls back. “Yep. Go on home. Thanks for all your help!”

Cool! I call the airline back. “We’re sorry there are no available seats until tomorrow morning.”

Homer D'oh!Oh, we totally saw that one coming.

I was explaining the whole deal to a friend of mine who said, “Flexibility — the key word of the 21st century.”

“Semper Gumby!” that’s my motto.

I was once on a mission trip and things were getting crazy. (I’m convinced there’s no word in Brazilian Portuguese for the English “plan.”) At one point I asked our leader if we’d moved through flexibility and on to the fluid stage.

He said, “Oh, we’re way past fluid. We’ve been gaseous for several hours now.”

I laughed long and hard when he said that. The double entendre with our reaction to some of the local food we’d recently had was just too much.

Of course sleep deprivation also may have made me a bit giddy at the time…

Anyway I should be heading home tomorrow sometime. Of course there are still about 22 hours for that plan to change. ;)

Enjoy!

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When Plans Fall Apart

July 24, 2006 By 3 Comments

Some days simply refuse to go according to plan. And yesterday was one of those days.

The plan was elegant in its simplicity. There was a church I wanted to check out in the morning. It wasn’t located exactly near my hotel room. But hey, for the first time on this trip I had a day with no work scheduled so why not? Then I was going to head back “home” to the hotel, goof off in the room, write an email to my sister, get some more groceries for my extended stay, do some laundry and catch some dinner.

And the day started off well too. I slept in, drove up to see the church. It took a bit longer than I’d planned. No problem. I planned for that possibility. They have an early afternoon service. So I went to find a coffee shop to hang out and read.

But no plan ever survives first contact with the enemy, eh?

I didn’t even get out of my car at the coffee shop when the phone rang and I got called into work stuff.

So instead of the leisurely day of goofing off I had planned my day ended up involving lots of driving and a trip to the airport to get a rental car.

Ah, well. At least I still managed to get the laundry done and find some groceries (sorry Sis! :oops: )

And then at the end of the day I actually connected with Liz Strauss finally! She made it back to town. She scored me an invite to a party at the Museum of Contemporary Art on Thursday night before I fly out on Friday morning. Talk about a nice way to cap off an otherwise frustrating day!

Old ShipwreckIt got me thinking about how much control we really don’t have in our lives. I mean we can plan for all sorts of eventualities but in the end we just plain aren’t in charge of how things work out.

I wonder what kind of thoughts were going through Paul’s mind the day the ship he was a prisoner on sunk around him, he got washed up onto shore and bitten by a poisonous snake. I’m pretty sure that wasn’t the way he planned for that trip to work out! (You can read about it here in Acts 27:27 – 28:6)

There is a Proverb that says

We can make our plans, but the LORD determines our steps.

And often it works out much better than we anticipated in the end if we only make the effort to look at it through the lens of the long view.

So I’m interested to see what today will bring.

Enjoy!

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