What's Going On Here?

Monday my friend Wes told me that a lady in the church he attends recently found her mother’s diary, a diary from the 1920s.

The daughter had no idea that her mother had kept this diary. It surprised her to discover that her mother had a life before she was even born. In fact, the mother’s diary even records how she and her future husband first met.

After the old lady’s death, the daughter found her mother’s diary as she was clearing away things to sell the house. She almost threw the book away along with other old papers before she realized what it was that she’d stumbled on to.

This news inspired Wes and me to talk for a long time about diaries.

I’ve kept my own daily (almost) diary for over 40 years (off and on).

That practice teaches me an important fact — At any given moment, I have no idea what’s going on in my own life!

I trivialize things that turn out to be significant, and I magnify things which turn out to be passing fancies. While a thing is happening, I have no clue how important or how minor it really is in the long run.

For instance, a few years ago the Senior Acquisitions Editor of a major publishing house called me about the manuscript of a book I wrote. He flew South to confer with me about changes he wanted in the manuscript. He talked about promotions, a book signing tour, cash advance, press run…

I thought his visit was so important. That I devoted page after page of my diary and much energy from my life to the meeting with this man.

I thought he represented a breakthrough in my writing career, We’d be poor no more. I’d be a rich and famous writer. I’d come into my own. I felt he was the most important person I’d ever meet…

Two weeks later his company fired him for embezzling and fraudulent expense account claims.

No one else in his company wanted to touch any project associated with him.

It turned out that he proved of no significance in the course of my life at all.

My book fell through the cracks.

Much ado about nothing.

On the other hand, neither Ginny nor I actually remember first meeting. We know the general time and place and circumstance; but when we first met, we neither one made enough of an impression on the other to warrant marking it on a calendar.

And now we’ve been happily married for almost 40 years and she’s turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me in my whole life!

Only I didn’t know that initially.

When I first met her, she was just another girl in the crowd.

My diary at the time made no mention of even meeting her!

That shows how much I know about what goes on in my own life.

That’s why I try (sometimes) to rely on God’s guidance in daily life. He alone knows what the future holds and what is truly important. That’s why I try (sometimes) to listen to His instructions and pay attention to His values.

Sure, I rebel and insist, like a 3-year-old, that I can tie my own shoelaces. I believe that I can do it myself. But in my right mind, I know that my times are in His hands; that I don’t really know what’s going on in my own life.

As King Solomon said, “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lean not to thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths”.

Sounds poetic, but it’s humbling for me to try (sometimes) to live that way..

So, while my diary may not record what’s really going on in my life — because I don’t know what that is — at least, I do try to record the great jokes I hear.

For instance, Saturday my friend Rex told me this one:

You’ve always heard that you can’t take it with you, but this wealthy man wanted to try. He made a contract with the Lord that when he died, he could take one thing with him. He packed the largest suitcase he could find with gold bars and hid it under his bed.

The rich man died and appeared before the gates of Heaven lugging this massive heavy suitcase. The angels in charge of airport security pulled him out of the line of people headed up the hill.

The angel said, “You’re not allowed to carry anything through the boarding gate”.

“Yes I am,” the man boasted, “I have a contract with the Lord that I can take one thing with me, and this trunk is my one thing”.

One angel read the contract and said to the other angel on guard, “He’s right. This contract says he is allowed to take it with him”.

They ran the trunk through the x-ray machine and passed the rich man through security. Then the angel guards watched him trudge up the hill straining and tugging and laboring and panting to get his heavy suitcase into Heaven.

“Strange lot, aren’t they,” said one angel to the others. “Why do you suppose that with a pass to bring in any one thing he wanted to, he’d pack a suitcase full of nothing but paving stones”?