Translating a World on the Edge

Are you a person who likes convenience? I certainly am. I like things to be available when I reach for them. I like for places to be near by so I don’t have to struggle to get there. I like people who are easy to be around so I don’t get my feelings hurt or find myself irritated by someone’s presence. That’s why, for me, Convenience is the first, necessary ‘C’ in the title of this blog.

The second of the necessary C’s is–for me–Comfort. I simply don’t want to be uncomfortable, or frazzled, or stressed out. I don’t want to be too cold, or too hot, but ‘just right.’

Of course, believing that those first two C’s (convenience and comfort) will always be present in one’s life is wholly unrealistic. We all know that “we can’t have everything” no matter how much we may want it.

In one of my last blogs, I spoke about spending the month of November at my favorite beach, Indian Pass,  located between Port St. Joe and Apalachicola, Florida. I had great plans to get a start on a new book entitled Something in the Water.  But just as I began, many things went wrong, not only with the pretty old house in which we were staying–I also came down with pneumonia. None of it was convenient or comfortable. Despite that, I’d still have to say the month was nearly spectacular–I wouldn’t take anything for the time I spent at Indian Pass.

Why is that? Well, it brings me to the third necessary ‘C’, as in Christ. God.

Because God is the all-powerful entity that puts everything into focus–no matter how inconvenient or uncomfortable it may be, and probably will be. God carries us through the inconvenient, the uncomfortable.

God gives us the strength to go on by realizing  value in our inconveniences and discomforts. God can even show us beauty in our suffering.

This poem was found in a dead soldiers pocket after a battle in the Civil War: Read it carefully. Apply it to your own life, and I believe you’ll see how true it is.

I asked God for strength that I might achieve ;
I was made weak that I might humbly learn to obey.
I asked God for help that I might do greater things;
I was given infirmity that I might do better things.
I asked God for riches that I might be happy;
I was given poverty that I might be wise.
I asked for all things that I might enjoy life;
I was given life that I might enjoy all things.
I was given nothing that I asked for;
But everything that I had hoped for.
Despite myself my prayers were answered.
I am among all men most richly blessed.