"That's Life!"

One of my Facebook friends recently wrote about his “hatred” of GLAD Cling Plastic Wrap—and the frustration it creates for him:  “Every time I have to get that bloody box of clear torture out of the pantry, I can feel my blood pressure begin a somewhat rapid ascent. I do not have a clue how people use this. I grab an edge and pull it out to what I am assuming is the proper length at which point I attempt to use the serrated edge of the box to rip it cleanly from the roll. I can assure you, it does not rip cleanly. It does rip unevenly and then proceeds to bunch up upon itself so that when I have that piece I had so accurately determined to be the right length, it has now shriveled up into itself to an eighth of its correct dimension. Now I have to try to pull at a multitude of corners to try to unseal it from itself. Of course the slightest bit of air will then push one of those corners I have freed back into the full sheet and it is stuck together again. Finally I may have a semblance of a sheet somewhat unraveled, but there is most assuredly not enough now to cover what I had originally intended to cover….”

I immediately thought of Frank Sinatra’s ditty, “That’s Life!”  Life is one big roll of GLAD Cling Plastic Wrap that seldom comes off the roll the way we would want or prefer.  It gets all shriveled up sometimes, and never “rips cleanly” and often “unravels”  and “clings” in ways over which we have no control. When “Life Tumbles In” (a phrase borrowed years ago from a sermon by John Arthur Gossip) life "feels and sometimes looks like that entangled GLAD Cling Wrap my friend gets so frustrated about.  

It is written, “When you were young, you girded yourself and walked where you would; but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will gird you and carry you where you do not wish to go” (John 21:18).  Having reached some maturity I’m beginning to understand and to grasp what this passage might mean. Doctors, dentists, etc., when asked “why?” such and such is going on with body parts or teeth will simply say “age!” There are more days, months and years behind us than there are ahead of us.  That which we were once able to do we can no longer do as Life Tumbles In.

Life Tumbles In unexpectedly and it is no respecter of age—it tumbles in no matter how old we are. Our GLAD Cling Plastic Wrap isn’t coming out the way we wanted or expected.  But “That’s Life!”  It isn’t what happens to us that matters really—it is, rather, how we handle what happens to us that counts.  We do not know what the future holds, but it is very helpful to know Who holds it and Who it is Who will gird us and carry us  even to those places where we do not wish to go.  I trust that “Who” will not be frustrated and knows how to handle a roll of GLAD Cling Plastic Wrap.