Just When You Think You Have It Rough

Just when you think you have it rough, you meet someone who has it worse.

On one of the rainy afternoons a couple days ago, Jonathan was having to meet a guy who had done the second floor job on a remodel job, after the first guy did a bum job. 

This was the second time Jonathan had already paid out to get the floor sanded, sealed, and lacquered.

For the first one, the guy hardly ever showed up when scheduled, or had excuses, and left with the money and a bad job done. There hadn't been anything Jonathan could do.

The second job turned out badly, too.

Jonathan had to leave home at 6:30 a.m. to meet the unhappy owner and wife at 7:30 to discuss what to do 

Then while Jonathan's wife and children were busy at home catching up on school and gathering garden produce before the cold weather came, Jonathan had to meet the guy that had done the bum job and see what could be worked out about the money that he'd already paid the man and the man had already spent on bills needing paid. 

And while his son was measuring carrots from the little raised bed, Jonathan was measuring up the size of his financial loss and measuring up the man who had done the bum deal.

Should he wring the man's neck or just wring the money back out of him?

The man had already been in trouble the day before. He had forgotten about a court case, and been pulled over, found out there was a warrant out for him, and gotten thrown in jail overnight. 

Now Jonathan could have him by the throat and try to wring the money back out of him that Jonathan had paid him a few days earlier. 

But how does a Christian man wring a man's neck and wring out an empty pocketbook

when the man falls apart right in front of him, bursts into tears and asks for a chance to do another better job at another place. (This place won't even allow him to come back to pick up his tools.)

Talk about a rainy afternoon. 

Tears raining down a grown man's face.

His wife is out of the country right now, and he's having to take his two boys to school in the morning and pick them up in the afternoon, and try to do his work somehow in the middle of that.

He had tried to do a good job, but the homeowners were upset and in a hurry for him to fix the other man's bad work, and he was trying to please them, so he got a fast-drying sealer that ended up drying a little different shade than the first sealer--much to the homeowner's displeasure. 

Trying to please the person, he made a mistake and it was a bum deal.

Jonathan could relate.

Who hasn't tried hard to please someone, and ended up being the one to blame for a bum deal????

At home,

 Jonathan's son and wife are trying to cheer up the rainy afternoon by doing Bible verse copy work, and finding pictures to illustrate Psalm 61--"When my heart is overwhelmed...Lead me to the rock that is higher than I."

Jonathan's wife had been anxious about the losses Jonathan was shouldering, and wondered why he was just letting those guys run off with the money after a bad job.

There are times when everyone involved is feeling overwhelmed.

But the sturdy Jonathan, with heart too tender to be stone, ended up putting his arm around the other guy's shoulder and simply saying,

"I understand."
Because we have all made mistakes, and we've all tried to please people, and ended up making mistakes and making them mad instead.

Come to find out, the man is a Christian, goes to a church we have passed many times. He offered to do more work for Jonathan for no pay to make up for it, and Jonathan has another job lined up that the man can do to make up for the loss.

And when Jonathan's wife, who had tried to bolster her husband's firmness about insisting the other guy take care of his part in the bad job and the resultant loss, heard of the situation, 

it was not the time to wring anyone's neck.

The only thing for a wife to do when a grown man, with a wife gone, weeps in front of her husband,

is to head to her kitchen and start putting a pie and meatballs together.

And when Jonathan showed up the next day on the man's doorstep with the apple pie, deviled eggs, meatballs and zucchini muffins that a wife and daughter had made,

all the man could say was, "You're too much!"

But is it too much to see a need and simply respond?

How does a fellow Christian enjoy to watch another go to pieces in front of him without having a heart for him?

They had stood there, Jonathan with his arm around the other guy,
just two dads trying to make a living for their families. 
And when Jonathan called another friend out of state, to unload a bit of the frustrations of this particular miserable job, and all the things that had gone wrong and how long it was taking and what he was standing to lose financially on it, the out of state friend had his own tale of woe. He was standing to lose three or four times as much as Jonathan was looking to lose.
And when you think you are having it rough, just call the next person and find out what they are facing, 

and it will make your life look a little more comfortable than you thought--

even on a rainy afternoon.