Day Sixty Two - It really annoys me...

Don’t you just hate it when you have an appointment and the person you are meeting is late. Especially if it is the doctor or dentist – for whom the term late doesn’t seem to apply.

Or – and this one really gets my goat – how about when you get one of those “all-day” appointments from your washing machine repair engineer. It tells you to expect them sometime between 7.30am and 6pm, and they turn up at 5.55pm. That really annoys me.

And whilst we are at it, another thing that annoys me is when – three days after the window cleaner does your house from top to bottom – a pigeon flies straight into the middle of your bedroom window leaving a ghostly imprint of a flying bird.

I think it’s Sod’s Law that states that if something can go wrong it will, and usually at the most inappropriate time.

Life often seems full of those moments when things don’t go according to plan. And what is worse, often they come in threes (like the buses – that’s another thing that annoys me). It can become a steady drip of life wearing you down. If we are not careful we can go into something of a negative tail spin and find ourselves in a very dark place.

One of my favourite Bible snapshots is the story from Luke 9: 51-56:

When it came close to the time for his Ascension, Jesus gathered up his courage and steeled himself for the journey to Jerusalem. He sent messengers on ahead. They came to a Samaritan village to make arrangements for his hospitality. But when the Samaritans learned that his destination was Jerusalem, they refused hospitality. When the disciples James and John learned of it, they said, “Master, do you want us to call a bolt of lightning down out of the sky and incinerate them?”

Jesus turned on them: “Of course not!” And they travelled on to another village. (The Message)

I like James and John. They remind me of … oh yes, me! Grumpy, annoyed, vexed. But I like Jesus even more, because he didn’t turn James and John out on their ear! He gave them another chance, he persevered with them. The God of the second chance … I forget who coined that phrase. Some of us are up to our ninth and tenth chances, and yet God still hasn’t given up on us. He is amazing, he is wonderful. He stoops so low to lift us up. He never forgets us, we are always on his mind, in his thoughts.

Faith in God doesn’t equate to a perfect life, a life of health and prosperity. Life is full of moments that led Mr Sod to create his law. But faith is about a tremendous journey with a crazy compassionate God who absolutely loves us to bits. It is a most incredible story.

By the way, did you notice this reflection was three hours late today??? Annoying, wasn’t it!

Neil Chappell