I had lots of time on Saturday so I decided to weed the flower bed in front of the house. When I got out front I noticed one of those free newspapers that often clutters up my driveway. I decided it was best to just get it right then. When I got to the front of the driveway I noticed a problem spot that really needed some water.
I went into the garage and put the little Miracle-Gro sprayer on it and set it up to do the watering. The Miracle-Gro has one of those shut-off valves so you can start the water then go do the spraying. Well, when I got down to the sprayer and turned on the water I noticed the pressure was shot.
I've been here before. There's an input filter in my house that gets clogged sometimes so I went down into the basement to clean that out. I got it cleaned out and turned the water back on, when I noticed some old potting plants that I had meant to take up to the attic the week before. Knowing I would just forget again if I didn't take them right up I hiked up to the attic to put them away.
Wouldn't you know, the last time I was up there I had found an old trunk from my Air Force days and had been looking through some of that stuff. Somehow I never put it all away so I put it all carefully back, closed the trunk, and put the trunk where it belonged. Then I headed downstairs.
It was lunch time so I made myself a nice sandwich and some lemonade and looked through the latest copy of World Magazine that had arrived the day before. I had a couple of cookies for dessert - my favorite chocolate chip recipe.
The doorbell rang as I was cleaning up and it was the mailman with a package I had ordered from Amazon. He also had brought me the letters he normally puts in the mailbox the trip. I thanked him with a cookie then took the mail back into the table. Most of it was junk, but there was a letter from my brother in China so I read that and put it in the mail pile. But the mail pile had been really piling up over the week so I sorted the pile into all the places I keep my mail.
By now it was 2:00. I'm getting older so I like to take a little nap in front of some game or other. When I woke up the game was actually pretty good, so I watched it until the end.
Suddenly it was 5:00 and time to get ready to meet my wife for dinner. I hadn't accomplished anything. Not only was the flower bed not weeded, but the bottom of the driveway was flooded from the water I had left running all day.
I wonder if this is how Alzheimer's starts.
” Suddenly it was 5:00 and time to get ready to meet my wife for dinner. I hadn’t accomplished anything. Not only was the flower bed not weeded, but the bottom of the driveway was flooded from the water I had left running all day.”
LOL!!
Life is what happens when “to do” lists are set in place!
Orange County was a quiet place filled with orange groves. Nobody ever lost sleep over the trees moaning in the night as they made those gorgeous, succulent oranges.
Likewise up in Napa County. The vines don’t disturb the tranquility grunting out their world-class grapes.
It’s John 15. Vine. Branches.
Just BE in The Vine.
I was talking about this very thing with one of my best friends last week. I’m just about to the point of subscribing to the idea that, if I’d JUST BE in The Vine; if I’d JUST focus on “First Commandment, First Place,” — if I’d just REMAIN, to use Jesus’ verb from John 15 — then all of the DOING I invest (waste?) so much time trying to make happen would be Divinely re-ordered, and the things that REALLY need to get done would actually flow naturally (and peacefully) out of my relationship to God, instead of being this forced mass of chaos that I keep cobbled together all over my mental calendar.
In that context, Matthew 6:33 looms large on the page: “Focus on The Kingdom of God as you FIRST priority, and all of the temporal things you really need will come to you in due course.”
That mentality is shockingly counter-intuitive to the entrepreneurial, “Seven Habits...” go-getter culture our business community has touted for so long. Still...there it is, with the attached promise of our needs being fully met.
It’s like, “Who ya gonna believe: Jesus or Stephen Covey?”
I think we’re related.
Thanks for the LOLs ArGee! Being old is a blessing where each of us old ones have determined revenge against the young is fun. It is good to belong to the Alzheimer’s current generation. Give a youngster a thought to hold on to and that youngster will be confused the rest of their life begging for someone to cause them more confusion.