Murphy Law

  The last month I have been challenged to put on the big boy pants and to start taking care of myself physically.  This includes going to the dentist and getting cavities filled and getting a physical done.  After all it has been three years since my last one.  I thought I I was done for the year until I woke up Tuesday morning.  I woke up one morning this week and when I looked in the mirror after getting up my face looked a little droopy.  Then I notice breakfast was kind of hard to it and when I couldn't smile fully and after realizing I have had a headache for the last two days, things were starting to get real.  It also got my mom really concerned and she brought me into the hospital to get checked out because she thought I was having a stroke.  After the CT Scan, blood work and EKG, it turns out I developed Bells Palsy, which has a lot of the same characteristic as a stroke.  Bells Palsy is an infection of the facial nerve and I have lost some of my function in the right side of my face which makes some of the most simple things a little bit of work like eating and brushing my teeth.  To top it off, it is hard for me to talk and it feels like I just got some dental work done

  Here is the kicker in all this, I was reminded of a conversation I had with a person I work with within the last week.  I often call her Part Time Paula because she is never at work during the summer.  She likes to use here three plus weeks of vacation between May and the end of August.  I told her I like to keep one or two days of my vacation in my back pocket just in case Murphy Law stops by.  Her response was that she has seen enough of Murphy in the last ten years that it is someone else turn to visit Murphy.  It got me thinking about Murphy's Law (which is if anything could go wrong, it will go wrong) and none of these things are earth shattering but here they are.

  We got to stop blaming our mistakes, bad decisions, and the failure to plan on Murphys Law.  One might say that the failure to plan is not planning at all.  People in general have a hard time owing up to stuff when it goes wrong, and it is always someone elses fault.  If we can not blame it on an orginization or a person, we blame it on Murphy.  Murphy will show up less when we not only start owning up to are end of the deal, and making sure that we take strives into working on making it better and reconciling with the people involved, Murphy will show up a lot  less.  It is a little thing called maturing and it takes work, time and tenacity.

  Murphy Law may also come in to play because of someone else failure to plan or stupid decisions.  We need to learn how to forgive and if these things keep happening, putting in some very healthy boundaries so that their decisions may be less destructive. 

  The third idea of Murphy law is that bad things happen because we live in a broken world that is desperate need of Christ redemptive work.  There are two things that we can do here.  The first one is become cold, hard and bitter at the world.  We become cynical to anything and everything along with being distrusting of every motive.  Or we could draw closer to God and get on bored with what He has planned and use those things that were meant for harm and use them to display God glory.  God's presence and glory are already being displayed, God could even have  greater reach if we joined in what God is doing.  It is allowing God to work in us and through us to display His glory.  When this happens, Murphy's law will loosen its grip on this world