Have you ever struggled with a task only to get very frustrated and give up?
This nearly happened to me twice in the last week except for a moment of “revelation”.
In my naivety I took on what I thought would be a laborious but straight forward task of tidying our long neglected garden shed.
I started in a fairly organised way pulling out items and placing them into categories – rubbish, sort through pile, tools, kids toys etc.
This soon regressed into a pile of junk way to close to the shed door for me to move beyond the shed doorway without multiple accidents. (Forget risk assessments and trip hazards!)
After what seemed ages I finally got to the back of the shed only to discover lot’s of shredded plastic and snails shells / trails covering the shed floor and walls. After a few puzzled moments (the shed’s not that old), I noticed that the middle part of the back wall had slipped off the floor leaving a one inch gap to the outside – aha I thought – hence the snails and at some point a rodent of some sort having chewed it’s way through some of the plastic toys presumably for some 21st century-style bedding.
So this presented a challenge which soon became a seemingly impossible task. There was not enough room to get behind the shed to push the wall back into place and so I would have to somehow pull two very heavy wood panels back onto the plinth from the inside.
I tugged for a few seconds at the frame work (remembering my bad back) and soon discovered there was no way.
Then I thought maybe if I could attach some rope some how I’d have more purchase and be able to pull the panels more easily.
After screwing in one cup hook near the floor and attaching some well used washing line (who says being a hoarder doesn’t pay off). I tugged and pulled and huffed an wheezed but she still wasn’t for shifting. Next I attached a second cup hook to the second panel to even the strain but still no use. Then I thought – hmmm maybe leverage was the answer. So I got a lawn edging spade and prized it’s nice flat blade under the wall to discover the reason this was such a challenge – the floor wasn’t flat so the wall panel was slightly too tall to be levered back onto the plinth.
I wasn’t giving up though (determination is probably one of my better traits) but at this point I was at a loss. I wandered outside and looked (again) at the gap behind the shed thinking maybe I could coax a small child (next door have plenty) to push the panel from behind but no, the gap was way too small.
At this point I decided to pray. It was a prayer I’ve not prayed before, along the lines of ‘God, you have a super-brain, could I borrow some of your brain power for a minute. How can I fix this shed panel?’. A very clear and concise answer came in a flash. ‘You’re on the right lines, son, you just need more leverage and thinner blades. I was very happy with that answer. 1. Because it praised my ingenuity thus far and 2. Because I knew I had exactly the right tools for the job (my Dad, in the days when car maintenance was a plausible undertaking without an electronics degree, always used to say “right tool for the right job” – and I’ve frequently found that to be true).
So with shiny, strong paint strippers retrieved from the garage along with a drill and some screws (after mopping up a half tin of paint I knocked off the top shelf), I then proceed with said task of fixing the panel, which this time was much easier and after a few goes I prized it back on to the plinth. A few frantic screws later, for fear of it slipping off again and the job was done. Now all I had to do was sort through the bomb site in my back garden and take a trip to the tip.
My short but very effective prayer left me pondering for the rest of the day. How many times have I struggled with a task without ever asking God for help? How many tasks would have been a darn site easier if I’d asked him for the best approach from the outset? And just how complicated a task does it have to be before God finds it taxing? (Mind blown at that last one). Anyway, my conclusion from all this pondering was simple – next time I’m presented with a challenging task I’m going to ask God for help – EARLY ON!
Later in the week I was finalisng the accounts for Fusion – a charity for which I volunteer as northern coordinator. I had to fix 4 months of wages which hadn’t been entered correctly / at all. It had been months since I last did this and even then, usually with my wife’s assistance. The task is way to boring to explain other than to say it involves several calculations, a journal entry and some credits and debits. Anyway, thankfully Quickbooks is both forgiving and strict in preventing you from entering an unbalanced journal which is what I was trying to do.
This time, I remembered more readily the hard lesson of my shed experience and threw one up to the big fella. His reply was again short and to the point. “Phone Clare and fix your formulas” (I was using Excel to do the calculations). Both steps were spot on. I phoned Clare, who very patiently gave me the advice I needed – considering she was busily trying to keep 15 little tikes busy at lunch club, reminding me how to calculate net pay given gross pay, tax and national insurance and a quick check of my calculations showed I was inputting the wrong figure. Bingo! The next half hour was plain sailing.
So, to sumarise in a much more succinct fashion, God loves to problem solve, His mind is immeasurably superior to ours (queue the War of the Worlds music) so why not ask for a helping hand from the One who knows? He loves to share in our lives, we just have to remember to include Him.