“God takes care of fools and babies.”
That’s what my father says when he wants to own up to saying
something silly. Dad believes that God has a special place in his heart for, and
spreads out his mantle of protection over, those unable to fend for themselves.
I believe it too, because the classifications Fool and Baby pretty much cover
everybody.
I see it all the time. We all get silly notions into our
head that are just really bad ideas. We see something. We get a hankering for
it. We devise and plot toward it. And all the while a little voice – a smart
little voice inside our head – whispers: “Bad idea. Bad idea. Bad, bad idea.”
I want a convertible.
You have three
toddlers. Bad idea.
I want to move to Alaska to be with that girl.
Cold weather makes you
sulk. Bad idea.
Sure, I can have a shot. It’s after 5.
You work until 7. Bad
idea.
I’ve been chasing that guy for months. What do you mean something
happened to his last girlfriend?
Bad, bad, bad idea.
And we whine when we don’t get everything we want. And we shake
our fists when God doesn’t answer every prayer. And then, if we are honest, and
examine our desires with a ruthless lens, it becomes painfully clear that a great
deal of what we want is just plain wrong for us. Not to mention those around us
But we want extensively and with abandon. Our wants reach
into every corner of our being. They fill us up to the point where we are
unable to see the pitfalls, the path veering into the briar, the rocky chasm
yawning before us. We are fools, so blinded by an Aurora Borealis of desire that
we trip down the road, blissfully unaware of all the dark shadows looming on
the way to our own personal Shangri-la.
But God – or an undefined higher power, or our higher
selves, or whatever you believe has a better vantage point from which to view
our fumblings – takes care of fools and babies. We don’t get what we want. We
get what we need.
Blessed be.