God and Juggling

I feel like most everyone has tried to learn to juggle at least once. Not a real committed effort for  most of us, but rather just tossing up a few tennis balls and seeing if we can keep more than two going at the same time.

Most of us failed miserably.

Where we live part of the year, in northern Idaho, they have an arts school that teaches, among other things, juggling. Any given day you might come upon a kid, or group of kids, on the street corners of downtown, juggling while on their skateboards, or while dancing or whatever. Running into them always makes me feel like we live in the coolest place ever.

I do not juggle. At all. I'm not even that good at multi-tasking, truth be told. I may pull off whatever is on the day's calendar, but if it gets too cluttered up, it ends up not looking too pretty, and neither do I at the end of such days.

A show we're watching this summer, America's Got Talent, has the coolest juggler I've ever seen. He comes out in a costume that is, I'm still deciding, either very cool or very creepy. What I'm not still deciding on is whether or not he's amazing. I've never seen a juggler like this - balls just fall out of the sky, and he never misses a beat. He could win the entire show.

So as I was walking Miss Lily this morning, after watching Viktor last night, I was praying. For this person and that family and this situation and that difficulty. Big and little issues and I was struck - 'God, you've got a lot to keep track of. So many of us, so many things that need taken care of.' I was actually covered up in a blanket of sadness, for some of the stuff going on in my life right now, and the lives of others I hold dear.

Sometimes it all feels like a bit too much. My hands, and heart, feel unable to handle everything.

We're down here, asking for everything from parking spaces to getting an organ transplant, to being cured of a disease that has no known cure, marriages that are shaking, people with addictions, rebelling kids, and terrorists and elections and on and on and on it goes.

Sometimes it's not the terrorist who blows up umpteen people to make a point, but rather a simple phone call gone sour, or words spoken and regretted, or unspoken and regretted. It's those moments that threaten to leave me completely undone.

Then by the grace of God, as I dipped my head under the tree hanging over the sidewalk, shook the leash to encourage Lily to smarten her step, all of a sudden it struck me. God isn't a juggler. He isn't catching balls from the air, keeping them all finely balanced, and trying not to drop one here and there. He is never surprised, although I'm certain sometimes his heart is grieved over the state of things. Of the choices we make. Or don't. But I don't have to worry that one of the balls in my life will drop, or that of those I love, or this country or world I care about. And I don't have to understand it all either. If God is so simple that my brain can completely understand him and how he works and holds it all together, then he's not much of a God.

So it's okay - at the end of the day it's okay. Things are in control, even when they look and feel out of control. I can relax, not be so stressed at my daily list I bring to God, worried I may forget to mention someone and then he'll forget too. It doesn't work that way.

While performing last night, Viktor dropped ONE ball, out of how many. That alone might be enough to get him eliminated. While I'm still trying to decide what I think about his outfit, I do hope the voters will give him grace for one ball dropped; he is human, after all.

I am confident, though, that not only does God not juggle, if he does wear anything, it doesn't look anything like Victor's get up.