Sometimes something happens and it makes me think ... could this be a Simple Faith column? It happened recently when I was cleaning up the kitchen after dinner. As I emptied the dish washer I had run earlier in the day and was putting the clean things away I had a stack of stainless steel bowls that once belonged to our moms.
Some were from my mom and some from my mother-in-law. The interesting thing about these bowls is that there are nine of them and they all fit one inside the other. Now, how amazing is that! I could imagine several fitting together but to have every one just small enough or large enough to fit inside its neighbor is amazing to me. It makes me think about how other things fit together.
It might be glasses on a shelf, china in a cupboard, pictures on a wall, clothes hanging in a closet. We have hundreds of things in our homes that are organized so they fit together with other things like themselves. Many are multiples of the same thing -- so of course they fit together.
Most of our glasses, and we have lots, are in groups of eight or 12 so they organize themselves. Finding a shelf that holds them all took some doing, but we managed to rearrange until the fit was right.
However, moving outside the house, the challenge grows. I have gardens where plants are organized so they fit together very nicely. This involves developing a harmony of size, shape, when they bloom, what color they are and if they need shade or lots of sun.
The first time a garden is planted can be an experiment, but hopefully I learn by doing. And just about the time I get a pattern that works really well, along come the deer who stand not 10 feet from my front door gobbling up what I just planted as well as several perennials that have taken years to become things of beauty. Now it becomes an opportunity to find a fit that looks good and doesn't attract the deer.
Moving beyond the dirt, rocks and soil there is another fit that requires constant attention and that is the calendar. When we worked full time, for most of us the weekdays were simple. We went to work and came home at pretty much the same time five days a week so we didn't have much on our calendar except that. Oh yes, there were evenings and weekends but they didn't seem to demand a lot of attention until the kids came along. Then it required constant monitoring of who, what, when and where until they left home for lives of their own.
Now that I am semi-retired I find that seldom are two days a week the same and it takes lots of planning to make it all fit, and checking my calendar daily to be sure I don't forget something.
While wanting things in my life to fit together, just like my stainless steel pans, I have to wonder how God wants me to fit into His plans for my life. I think He has a plan for all of us and I need to do all we can to understand what His is for us. There are so many ways in our world today to understand what His message is. Yet for each of us, we need to find our own fit if we want to be true messengers of His word.
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Burgess moved to Bella Vista in 1995. She considers each day a gift -- although some are more fun to open than others.
Religion on 10/07/2015