The Difference a Day Makes

Thurs 7:40am

Now, I’m an early morning person (my internal alarm clock goes off somewhere in the vicinity of 5:30 - 6:00am every morning, The snooze button works maybe once a week) and my day normally begins with a slow wake up in front of my computer. After checking my email, reading a few comics that I frequent and doing a little goofing off it’s a shower and then off to wherever I am going for the day. This is normally done by 7:30 at the latest.

This morning after my shower I realized that it was going to be a good day. It’s Thursday, I get to see two of my ‘grown up’ high school kids from Santa Barbara, lead worship, and pick up the keys to my new apartment. All in all it should be a good day.

So then what is the difference between seeing a good day and a bad day coming. Monday looked like it was going to be a good day as well. A morning of quality worship, many of those who were gathered there thanked me for just the time of worship as opposed to another morning of usual routine. I went to class slightly exhausted, as I normally get when God has used me, and things are looking good. After class I run into a good friend of mine and for all the joy that she had in the morning she got sideswiped by a wrecking ball, eighteen-wheeler, and the Titanic in one blow. Good day to bad day.

On the other hand I can remember many a bad day that turned out for good. In college the youth group was putting on a large scale outreach event: 130ish kids planned to show up, 4 inflatable games, BBQ, music, etc etc. I was in charge of food and BBQ, cause I’m like that. So I trade out my 2 door sports car for a 2 door truck to move all the food, I am at Costco by the time they open, and load up around $200 worth of food in to the back of my buddies truck, by myself. Go to drive the food to the church and the truck doesn’t start. The engine doesn’t even try to turn over. So I go get my car (same parking lot) and try to jump his car, no luck.

$200 of food + broken truck = not cool.

I start making phone calls looking for another truck and help moving the stuff. I need another truck because the BBQ we are going to use looks like someone cut a metal barrel in half, welded a frame around both ends and then put a grill on the top. Very cool, needs a truck to move it. By this time I have gotten over panic mode and am really just starting to enjoy and see every single irony that was happening. Quite literally I was missing every singly light, I had to drive behind every slow driver that was passing another slow driver who was passing a semi, the list goes on.

4pm rolls around and I finally have everything set up, fire started and kids should start to show up around 5ish. I was supposed to have precooked the burgers and have been done cooking around noon - 1ish. Band practice is done and the inflato-games are being delivered. Music and message yields about 40 kids coming up to accept or rededicate themselves to Christ.

There is no such thing as a good day or a bad day, not until it is over at least. But rather moments and chances for God to use our gifts, abilities, and our time for his glory. How we react to the trials in our lives builds our character and shows those around us what type of person we are. If my cynical, sarcastic, depressed mood had kicked in on that day there may not have been as many who would have come up to accept Christ. The attitude that we show affects those around us, even if we don’t realize it.

9:30 pm

It was a good day, I'm tired, packed, and I think I'm going to have another fun day tomorrow.