Sunday, March 12, 2017

The Wisdom in the Wind and the Destinations of Leaves

WORK is good for us, even if we don’t enjoy it. It’s one of the purposes of our lives — to enjoy our work. Work teaches us wisdom.
I’ve found God teaching me such a wisdom in the work of sweeping, sucking and blowing leaves. Most times I come back two days later and the leaves have returned. Sometimes it’s two hours, and worse when it’s two minutes. (Perth, Western Australia, is one of the windiest cities in the world.)
Whenever someone tells me that they would prefer work like mine — blowing and sucking leaves — over their more nebulous work, because they’d actually see results for their work, they may well forget how short-lived the results are. Instead of seeing results in my work, many times God has tested me with the futility of it.
But such work is not futile even if it seems so. There is wisdom over the horizon beyond futility.
Whenever we do anything in life that seems futile, we’re simply a step from frustration.
And that’s where purpose is birthed: on the cusp of something like frustration. In frustration we’re only a moment from God — or an eternity away.
The ultimate purpose in frustration is to teach us something: that we have less control over the physics of life than we’d prefer.
Knowing the leaves are coming back need not cause frustration, but awareness of our place in life. This physical life runs according to physical laws.
Frustration is futility. But it is equally an invitation into acceptance of that cannot be changed.
Such is the wisdom of God nurtured within; whenever we agree with incontrovertible reality.

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