Columbia Christian Fellowship

When I was a small boy, I loved The Three Stooges. They were on at 8:00 A.M. on the weekend. There was this time when I was too small to know what 8 o’clock was truly all about, but I did know that when the little hand was on the 8 and the big hand was on the 12 that this was when The Three Stooges came on the TV. I knew how to turn the TV on and I knew how to change the channel, which in those days meant turning the huge tuner dial on the TV to the desired channel, in our case channel 6, 8 or 13, the only channels that we got.
One weekend morning, I was maybe 4 or 5 years old, I woke up early in the morning, before anyone else in the house was up. I really liked the show, as I mentioned, and I wanted to watch it right away. I looked at the clock and the little hand was on 6 and the big hand was on the 9. Not right for the show to be on. The clock was open faced with the hands exposed. It was hung on the wall above our GE electric range. Suddenly, I had a great idea. I went and got the old grey, metal stool that we used in the kitchen to reach the top shelves and I moved it over in front of the stove. I climbed up onto the stool and then onto the top of the electric range. Next I stood up and reached up to the clock and I turned the hands so that the little hand was on the 8 and the big hand was on the 12. There! Now I could go to the TV and turn it back on and set the channel and watch my favorite show. I turned on the TV and adjusted the channel. There was a commercial on, so I waited. After the commercial a show came on that was, of course, a show other than The Three Stooges. I couldn’t figure it out. Then I remembered how it was that sometimes the show didn’t actually start until the big hand was just a tiny bit past the 12, so I climbed back up onto the stove and began to adjust the big hand. From my location on the stove, I could walk to the front edge of the stove and lean over a bit and see the TV. Still no Stooges appeared. Next I looked at the clock and realized that the little hand was not exactly aligned with the 8. “Aha!” I thought; that’s the problem. I carefully aligned that little hand to be precisely in the middle of that 8. Once again I moved to the front of the stove, but alas, still no Stooges. My next idea was to grab the hands of the clock and lean way over so that I could see the TV and adjust the hands while watching for the show to appear on the screen. Perhaps, I reasoned, I was moving the hands into the right position, but I was moving them past the exact location that it took in order to start the show. During this last maneuver, I held the clock hands in my own and leaned over as far as I could in order to see the TV and twiddle the hands back in forth in an attempt to find the exact, necessary hands position for the show to start,. This is when my Mom walked out of her bedroom. Surprised to see the TV on and no one in the room watching it, she walked around the corner and into the kitchen, where she found her youngest son precariously positioned on top of her stove and literally hanging from the hands of the kitchen clock and straining to watch the TV from this location!
“What on earth are you doing?!” she asked me. “Setting the clock hands so that The Three Stooges will come on the TV” I said sincerely. “What?” she said. “You told me that the Three Stooges didn’t come on until the little hand was on the 8 and the big hand was on the 12, so I’m puttin’ them there, but the Stooges still aren’t coming on the TV.” I said. “No, it doesn’t work that way,” she told me, “You just have to wait until the hands go there on their own.” “Oh,” I said, “I didn’t know that.” Then she got me some cereal and I waited it out.
In life we all tend to want to set things up as much as we can, to have things go our way. Sometimes that works and sometimes we just have to wait for things to unfold. Waiting is sometimes difficult, but sometimes unavoidable. When it’s necessary, it’s good to have God and good friends to wait with you. Don’t be afraid to let your world unfold by itself, it may end up being a great story that you can tell years later. Blessings!

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