Planning

This morning I had the children's sermon during services at the Methodist Church. I didn't remember until late last night that I had to do it.

I approached it as I do any story I am about to write.  I wander around the house looking at photos, at objects and sometimes journals.  Sooner or later, something hits.  Yesterday, it was a calendar that set me off.  I could talk about making plans. I started collecting calendars upstairs and down.  There was one with photos of my grandson, another with photos from our camping trips, and another, from my penpal in France, with photos from Europe.  I threw in the November calendars from the aquatic center and the church newsletter.

Then I looked at my day planner.  This is what a page looks like at the beginning of the week.  I mark down everything I intend to accomplish during the week.  That includes writing projects, choir, meetings with friends, swimming, exercise, walking a dog and just the usual things like meditating, practicing, journaling and so on. Then when I finish something, I cross it off the list.  If I am lucky, a page will look like this at the end of the week:

But it almost never does.  Most of the time, I don't finish much of what I wanted to do.

That gave me the theme for the sermon:  planning.  When  I got to church, I got my choir planner out plus the bulletin for the church service.  I circled everything I would do during the service:  direct the choir in the introit, the anthem and the benediction, play duets with the organist for hymns and the offertory, and of course, do the children's sermon.  I updated the list of anthems the choir would do for the next few weeks.

Now I had my stack of calendars and planners to show the children. I started the sermon and sure enough, surprise! the microphone didn't work. I have a loud voice I use in nursing homes so I plowed ahead.

I asked them if they ever had to plan anything. They told me their parents put things on the calendar.  I showed them all my planning tools. Some recognized the aquatic center calendar. I showed them the choir planner with all its changes. My choir almost never sings what we had figured on doing because surprise! someone didn't show up, we had to work with a new theme, or just had a better idea.

Then I asked them if they knew God's plan for them.  No one did.  And I said, "Surprise!  Me, neither. Whatever happens, it's always a complete surprise to me. But it's almost always something really neat."

Then I had the choir sing the chorus to "God Will Take Care of Me," and that was the sermon.

This week, yet another GOP candidate said that God told him to run for President. That makes three or four of them God has been talking to. God is either fibbing to all but one or maybe, surprise! God wants the worst bunch of fools to run so President Obama will be re-elected.

When it comes to politics, nothing much surprises me any more.