“If I…do not have love, I gain nothing.” ~ 1 Corinthians 13:3b
In his book, No Perfect People Allowed, my friend John Burke offers a beautiful metaphor for understanding what it’s like to be a human being. We are, each one of us, a unique and beautiful masterpiece, says John, a glorious work of art crafted by God for his pleasure and our delight. But, he adds, we are masterpieces splattered with mud…mud that hides some of our God-given beauty and distracts us from the beauty beneath.
“If you keep doing what you’ve always done, you’ll keep getting what you’ve always gotten.” ~ Author Unknown
I loved watching reruns of the old TV show “Get Smart” when I was a kid. The series highlighted the adventures (read that: slipshod shenanigans) of Secret Agent 86, Maxwell Smart. Talk about a man without a plan! Max wouldn’t know a good plan if it called him on his shoe phone. He wouldn’t know a good plan if it screamed at him under the Cone of Silence. He wouldn’t know a…okay, I’ll stop. The point is, what made that show funny was that most of the time, Max didn’t have the slightest clue what he was doing, but he did it anyway, and so went bumbling into every situation with the bravado and confidence of a complete boob. It was his faithful partner, Agent 99, who generally won the day and kept Max from danger, but because she had a thing for the guy, she always let him take the glory.
