Holes In Time

I don’t know what to do with myself.

The space between our Anniversary trip and Thanksgiving presents me with an odd block of time too long to just laze around in and too short to allow any major project.

I’ll face that same sort of odd block of time between Thanksgiving and family birthdays. Other holes in time will appear again between birthdays and Christmas and the next round of birthdays and then New Year’s Day and then Super Bowl.

Each space between each event rings hollow. Any project I start will be interrupted by the next family event so I try to fill these holes in time by catching up on minor chores around house and office.

But I get little done.

Right now I’m building a time/task schedule for when I can return to normal work. I’m trimming the garden to the extent that the cold weather will let me. I’m culling my book shelves and I’m reading (Yesterday’s book was C.S. Forrester’s Age Of Fighting Sail, a history of the War Of 1812).

Monday, my daughter Eve took me to breakfast at Dave’s Diner and we talked about lions and library security and family stuff.

Tuesday my friend Wes took me to breakfast at Dave’s and we talked for hours about the immortality of the soul—or the lack thereof.

We also talked about the amount of waste in the universe, especially wasted human lives and talents. The spoilage is appalling! This world is so fallen and twisted and perverted that multitudes of fine human beings do things they were never designed to do.

The world, the flesh and the devil scatter the talents and gifts God has given mankind till much of life resembles a train wreck. Evils sidetrack humanity so that we find a guy God meant to be a great poet working in a factory, a man God designed to be a fine mechanic teaching remedial shop to dullards. We find a meant-to-be opera singer tends bar, a mother shuffles papers in an office, a should-be-attorney works in a day care center, a nurse fills out insurance forms, a great teacher gets promoted into administration never to teach again.

Alas, King Solomon said, “There is nothing better for a man, than that he should eat and drink, and that he should make his soul enjoy good in his labor. This also I saw, that it was from the hand of God”.

What a joy it is to meet a person who has found the right niche, the round peg who fits into a round hole. It’s a pleasure to see such a person work no matter what job they are doing. They exude joy.

That’s rare.

But more often we see talents and destinies poured out on the ground.

Tragic Wastage.

Such is this fallen world until Jesus returns and sets all things right.

We desperately need the Savior!

All said and done, we can not endure without Him.

We dare not.

Who wants a life of eternal frustration?

Speaking of frustration— when Gin & I returned from our Anniversary trip, I found my computer managed to screw itself up in my absence. Yes, it went askew without my touching a single key.

Usually I have to do something to mess my computer up, but new improved technology now updates automatic features which can screw it up without my help.

So, Tuesday night my youngest son, Donald, a computer network administrator, came over to straighten it out for me. A task I’d worked on all day but which he accomplished in just a few minutes.

Donald tells me that he’s thinking of leaving physics and computer science (the areas where he holds degrees) and becoming a minister.

I don’t know how I feel about that.

He is already active as a volunteer in a soup kitchen, and he’s adept at counseling, and the idea of ministry has often tugged at his heart… But I fear he’s too good a Christian to last long as a professional minister.

I fear church politics and pettiness might destroy him.

I may be reading my own sour experiences with organized religion into my vision of his future, so I have to be cautious in expressing my opinions about this. I’m too bitter, too often hurt by church contact, to be objective.

Back when Donald was in high school, one summer vacation the government sent him out to Los Alamos to work with atomic stuff, nuclear reactors, and Cray computers (the most advanced in the world). When he got back to Jacksonville, he chose to spend the next two weeks of his summer vacation living in a slum rescue mission where he ministered to the demented, the drunk and the debauched. He seemed equally at home and effective in both the worlds of advanced science and advanced degradation.

I’m proud of him and pleased with him… it’s the world of professional Christianity I worry about. I think that few Christians are strong enough to survive in a church environment.

But, I’m probably projecting my own weakness when I say that.

Of course, I also remember that when Donald was earning his physics degree, he and his geek buddies in the lab used an industrial-strength laser beam, one that could burn through steel plates, to give each other hair cuts!

Maybe the world would be a safer place with him behind a pulpit.