A Plate In Spain
My sister was in Spain the other day. Not a sentence I get to type often. She is spending time in Europe visiting our niece, who has been at Bible school in Sweden this year. She has sent us back a few great photos of time on the beach, a couple of rocks she picked up for my pond (another story), and various other moments she thought we would enjoy.
Yesterday, Monica got a text from her with a picture that would be nonsense to anyone else, but made my wife laugh out loud. When she showed it to me, my mouth fell open. It was the picture you see above. Just a plate. A plate in Spain.
What made mouths open and voices laugh was the specific plate. You see, about a month ago, Monica decided we had lost too many various dishes from our collection and so needed to replace them. While we were on a trip to our own local outpost of Sweden, IKEA, to pick up a couple of dressers, Monica noticed some options. After much discussion, we picked out the dishes we thought would fit our home perfectly.
I’ll give you a second to guess what those dishes look like.
Maybe it shouldn’t come as a surprise that a fine restaurant in Spain would share our taste in dinnerware. And it certainly isn’t shocking that an international retailer would be as likely to sell those dishes in Spain as they are near the Portland Airport. But the odds of us finding out seem astronomical.
It’s not like my sister frequents the Spanish seaside. And in the course of that trip, there were only so many times they would go out to eat. Not to mention that Monica and I could have chosen from several other designs, or we could have waited another month to even think about new dishes. I mean, I know the odds of getting a perfect bracket during March Madness are slim, but maybe I should have filled one out, because the unlikely feels a little less… ”un” right now.
Ecclesiastes 9:11 CSB
Again I saw under the sun that the race is not to the swift, or the battle to the strong, or bread to the wise, or riches to the discerning, or favor to the skillful; rather, time and chance happen to all of them.
I’ve always liked Ecclesiastes. I know Proverbs gets all the glory for being the hub of wisdom, but there’s something special about the sequel. Certainly fits with my experience in life better.
Proverbs gives some great advice that in essence boils down to if you do “A”, then “X” will be the result. And doing “A” is usually the right thing to do. And please don’t take what I’m about to say as an advocacy for doing “B” instead of “A”. I’m not that reckless.
But Ecclesiastes is that wonderful reminder that even when you do “A”, sometimes it comes out “Y”, leaving you wondering…why? I did the right thing, so why didn’t the right result follow? Once or twice in my life, I felt like I followed all the wisdom, and the results didn’t even all fit into one category. Worked out well over here and then blew up in my face over there.
The great gift of this unpredictability is that it puts the focus back where it belongs. Not on the result, but on taking the right step in the first place. Because the reality is that in this world, it’s a hard enough task to try to figure out the right thing, without trying to control all the outcomes at the same time. And when we accept that Ecclesiastes is as much a part of God’s truth as Proverbs is, that becomes a much easier pill to swallow.
So, I suppose the moral of this story is to pick the plates you like best. You never know if your sister visiting Spain will eat off matching ones, but maybe. And, I suppose it’s also a great reminder for me to keep my eyes focused on doing the right thing the best way I can, knowing I can’t control the outcomes, but trusting that in the end, God knows how to work it all together to tell a great story anyway.