Restaurant Dining
Dan Kunz
When was the last time you ate in a restaurant? Depending on where you live, that may have been days ago or more than a year ago. It may also depend on whether you’ve been vaccinated. It may depend on your level of bravery. It may depend on a variety of things, but most people enjoy restaurant dining enough to miss it and are anxious to be waited on again.
If you’ve ever eaten in a restaurant, you may have had the experience of receiving the wrong order. Maybe your meal was switched with your friend or family member. Maybe the waiter or waitress didn’t hear you correctly. Maybe it was a mistake back in the kitchen. In any case, not getting what you ordered can be frustrating. As more and more people are shopping online, receiving the wrong product is bound to happen more and more as well. Again, frustrating. It’s a hassle to reorder a meal or a product, but a little patience usually produces what you want.
Although I haven’t read the book, I love the title. “This Isn’t the Life I Ordered: Setting Sail When Your Relationship Fails”, by Jenniffer Weigel, pretty much sums up what a lot of people probably feel about their lives, even without focusing on relationships. It’s one thing to receive shrimp instead of steak at the restaurant; it’s another to be childless when you hoped to have a house full of kids. It’s one thing to receive pink slacks when you ordered red ones; it’s another to lose your job right after you made your first payment on a new house. “This isn’t the life I ordered” might apply to dozens of situations in your life. Sometimes those situations are a mere irritation, but sometimes they are downright tragic. Sometimes they are self-inflicted, but sometimes they are beyond our control.
My grandmother lost her husband at the age of thirty. She was left to provide for four children, all under the age of seven. My mother was the oldest of those four kids. Not only did my grandmother not order that life, but she also probably never dreamed that she would be in that situation. My mother had to quit school after eighth grade and get a job to help support her brothers and sisters. She loved school and certainly never ordered that life.
It may sound trite to say, “We don’t know what the future holds, but we know who holds the future,” but Christians really need to embrace that hope. Our heavenly Father, knows us, loves us, and helps us. Jeremiah 29:11 “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
When we look honestly at our lives, it not hard to see what a mess we can sometimes make of them. If we could “order” our own lives, the results would be less than pleasant. God not only has the power to make our lives what he deems best, but the wisdom to make those choices. Our challenge is to trust his plans for us and glorify him in living them out.