Thinking of a title for my Sunday blog this week, which must be prepared this Saturday night as tomorrow is not only a day of rest in the morning for me and Carol, it is an exciting day of choir work as we audition over 50 singers for Montreal Gospel Choir. Exciting season-beginning event each year.
So….what of the title, “God doesn’t have any problem with that”. Well, if God were God On High, and also Prosperity God, wishing, even willing my material well-being, I know he would have a problem with the way I conduct my business. This Prosperity God would be ashamed to be associated with an affair like mine which refuses to progress and finds itself (parce que, l’affair dans cette affair, c’est MOI) doing shoddy things like lugging home leftover product wrapped up with ice like I was some bag-lady moving her worldly possessions. At the June market I reached my target of a complete sell-out in spite of having significant un-ordered product. When this happens, I’m elated the whole trip home. Today I had little extra product available at the outset (except in Garlic-smoked sausage) so I didn’t try to promote extra sales. Result: I didn’t get extra sales and had several no shows – people not claiming their orders.
[Note added 6 weeks after original date of this blog: watch this 6 minute presentation on the effects of inner voices from Alain de Botton’s School of Life. You could say that my rather confusing blog “God has no problem with that” is about me listening to my inner voice condemning me about the way I do business. Fortunately, God is to me the comforting, encouraging inner voice and more than that, God specializes in redeeming bad situations, at least that is my experience. Read on and see what happens when I’m faced with more leftover product than I can carry and a rapidly approaching deadline if I am to reach the last Saturday train back to Montreal.]
What did the God that I know do? (Btw, He is Suffering Servant God and God Immanuel, too). This God sent an absolute angel of a taxi man: patient, caring, good driver, very professional, a listener. The flat rate from Burlington to Union Station downtown Toronto was nothing miraculous, but I tipped him as if he was Jesus Christ meeting Abraham. God can get me more of the tipping money and he all-the-time-Jehovah-Jireh does (that’s my life experience). But still, I’m lugging a hockey-bag-sized ensemble of 4 X 5 kg garlic sausage plus ice bag to keep the product chilled, plus insulation to keep the ice from totally melting, a vinyl sign used between ice and product to keep the whole thing from becoming sausage soup until I got on the chill train. ‘Le tout’ bound together and made carry-able, but not elegantly, with the jib halyard that I salvaged from the items in the rummage shed at the Lake of Bays dump several years ago. Fer shame, Ted!
I am presently returning from a business trip – please don’t imagine me meeting clients like a traditional businessman might on a business trip. That is what I do – meet my clients – but we’re not talking of some future sale, we’re handing over product that they have ordered from me by phone or email. If I did it every month I might really hate what I do, but I do it 4 times per year (go to market) and it refreshes the majority of what I do in my business which is work by myself in a cooler, packaging sausage while staring at the box liners hanging in front of my stainless steel work table. I don’t exactly hate that either, as it is menial work which gives a person time to think great thoughts, and the one day per week nature of packaging is about the appropriate healthy level for doing that sort of thing.
God has no problem with that. God can use that, even when I’m ashamed of myself for my shabby show. God is ‘in it’. Like ‘with me’ – Immanuel. God doesn’t desire to put me in a situation where I don’t feel much respect for my business self, but he doesn’t say “I’m out of here” or reinforce my negative self condemnation, he sends his angels to carry me. Sometimes the taxi dispatcher sends Jesus.
Glory to God, in the highest!
And peace, on earth.
Good will…
btw, the bag-lady worldly possessions ensemble got delivered to my faithful Cornwall customer (and perhaps himself a double agent school teacher / part-time angel) who was over-the-moon for how it worked out in his favour and was ready for me to deliver like this all-the-time. That would be putting the Lord, Thy God to a foolish test (in my eyes, anyways). This one’s a one-off, kind of cool-in-the-end experience that started with me wallowing in misery. And praise God, for His ways are right. But Via Rail delivery? Not happening…..more than once.