Something Was Wrong

Today I went out to eat with five co-workers. We ate at one of those food bar steak houses. My boss was paying so I waded into the salad bar, the vegetable and meat bar and - yes - the dessert bar. The food was great and we were all stuffed. We had a great time, laughing and sharing our lives with each other. Imagine our surprise, then, as we walked out at not quite 1:00 pm and found that the health department was shutting the restaurant down! There were handwritten signs on the entry doors that said "Sorry for the inconvenience. We are closed". We didn't find out for sure what was up, but obviously something was wrong.

Tomorrow is my last day with these co-workers. I've taken another job much closer to home (as in less than a mile walking). I was offered a substantial raise in pay to stay on, but I felt that it was best to go ahead and leave (though I hope to fill in there occasionally). Now I've only worked in this place for six months, but I've come to really love and enjoy working there. I've made great friends and I always looked forward to going to work. But... something was wrong. Details are unnecessary, but the place just seemed a little unstable. I felt a lack of security there and I didn't want to trust my ability to provide for my family to that place. But,really, I'm going to miss all my friends there.

It's such a drag to make friends, then move on, usually losing contact with most of these new friends. That's really why I'm trying to blog now and why I even started a MySpace page. I'm tired of making friends - at work or at church or wherever, and then losing touch when they move on or I move on.

So writing this I'm reminded of a church where I spent a decade of my life (let's just call it Tico's Praise Palace to preserve anonymity). I loved that place. I was happy there for a long, long time. I made great friends who I still treasure and who I miss very much. To this day I don't totally understand what went wrong. There's still grief in my heart when I think about the place. We've been gone for exactly ten years now, but it's a rare week that I don't think about the good old days there and the close friends we had.

How kind and faithful God is though. So often in this world something goes wrong. Whether it's a restaurant, a workplace, a church, a friendship... whatever it is - nothing is picture perfect. But in the midst of the mess there are sweet moments of friendship, golden experiences of fellowship; there's love, mercy...

But one day we'll be taken to a perfect place and we will stand in the presence of perfect love. Whoo-hoooo!

I'm going to go grab my guitar now and sing some old songs. I'm feeling sentimental.

Lead on, Lord.