Progress Isn’t Always Pretty

A friend of mine is taking serious steps to get aligned with God, and he has all sorts of problems. People let him down constantly. Things go wrong for him. He got in trouble with the law, in a moment of completely inexplicable irresponsibility. He has all sorts of financial issues because of his credit history, and because his legal problems–combined with Miami’s Spanish-first policy–make it hard for him to get employers interested.

If you think bilingualism is a great idea, wait until you try to get a job in Miami. It’s no wonder Cubans think it’s heaven. They get first dibs on every job because of their remarkable and unique refusal to learn the language of the country that saved them. Strange way to thank us.

He still makes a lot of mistakes, but I keep working with him, because I know he’s not joking about fixing his life. Also, I know I’m going through the same thing, even if my experience is not nearly as difficult as his.

The other day while I was in prayer, I got a picture in my mind. I don’t mean a magical vision; just something that occurred to me. I thought of a dirty, blind canal full of dead fish, floating turtle grass, and junk.

When you aren’t led by the Holy Spirit, you’re off course. You’re like a boat that has turned up a blind canal. A canal that goes nowhere will fill up with crap over time, and at the end of it, there is nothing but a concrete wall.

If you cruise up a blind canal, you will have to go by all sorts of obstacles. The debris in the canal will be in your way the whole time. When you wise up and turn around, things don’t improve right away. In order to get out, you’ll have to go through the same mess you passed on the way in.

My friend and I–you are probably in the same situation–putted our way up our blind canals for a long time. Then we reluctantly, grudgingly turned around, and we expected everything to be fine. Of course, that isn’t what happened. The junk was still there, and now we are cruising through it.

Today I thought of this, in connection with the work I’m doing, putting my dad’s financial transactions in Quickbooks. I don’t mean to whine (this time), but it’s the opposite of fun. I had to study accounting briefly, which is just about the most boring thing a human being can do, and then I had to learn how to use the program. I also had to get special materials to make it work with rental properties. Now I sit for hours every day, entering checks and bills.

It’s a drag, but it was predictable. For years, I tried to get my dad to keep track of things week by week instead of all at once, during a yearly two-month period of hell. He would not listen. By the time I got ahold of things, over a year’s worth of transactions had to be dealt with.

The work I’m doing is not fun, but the main reason it’s not fun is because my dad sowed for it over a period of decades. If he had been doing what he should, I would be entering current transactions, which would be relatively quick. Because he didn’t, I’ve been entering things going back to December of 2014. The work of entering transactions has been multiplied by about 18.

In a couple of weeks, I won’t hate Quickbooks any more. I’ll love it. I’ll tell people how wonderful it is. I’ll be living in the world of a responsible person doing maintenance, not that of a goofball doing tons of remedial work.

I brought it all on myself. I’m not saying other people didn’t screw up. I’m saying I let a lot of things pile up over the years, and now I’m paying for it. I don’t know if I could have made my dad use accounting software, but I am confident that one way or another, God would have arranged things so this experience would have been much better.

The Quickbooks thing is but one example of old, creaky problems I’m having to fix now.

God aligns things. He straightens our paths. The promises of the Bible are true, but they’re only true for people who truly give themselves to him, and when you change your ways, things don’t necessarily change instantaneously.

God doesn’t just do repairs; he also puts thorns in our paths to show us we’re screwing up. Or he merely lets others put thorns in our paths.

When I was living in Israel, I saw a very strange thing: impenetrable walls of thistles. You would really have to see these things for yourself in order to believe it. They looked like something out of a movie. The plants they grew on were very tall; they must have been seven or eight feet in height. They grew right against each other, so you couldn’t walk between them. They were covered with razor-sharp thorns. There is no way a human being could get through them. I couldn’t even see through them.

I think about that sometimes. Israel was arranged by God to illustrate Biblical principles. I think those creepy thistles were there to show the Jews what life was like without his help.

In some ways, we expect too little from God, and in other ways we expect too much. We don’t think he’ll fix our lives, so we stick with our own stupid plans. Once we turn around, we expect him to make everything wonderful overnight.

The things at which you fail are signposts, telling you you’re going the wrong way. It’s that simple. If you want to get past them, you have to stop leading yourself. When you accept God’s leadership, you will start to defeat your obstacles, but you shouldn’t be surprised if they don’t clear up all at once.

I eagerly await the day when I can honestly say I like Quickbooks. I may throw a party. Unfortunately, I don’t think it will be deductible.