Saturday, January 22, 2011

Bad Timing

Timing is everything. It all began yesterday when, with some encouragement from a couple friends, I decided to start a blog. Wasn't sure what it was going to be about, but I figured I would come up with something. The process began. Since I'm a computer techy, first thing on the list was to make sure the design was exactly how I wanted it. I began with the top; the banner. After scanning through Google images for a bit, I found the perfect picture to illustrate my theme of personal memoirs. It was then opened in Photoshop, a background color was chosen,  and text was added and aligned. It was done and this image was on it's way to becoming the header of my new blog. I uploaded it and was anxious to see how it would look. My blog is refreshed and what do I see? A blurry mess. "What did I do wrong?" I wonder to myself. Okay, must of have the wrong settings in Photoshop, save it again and I'll be good to go. Only problem was that it never got better. No matter what size this image was or what settings I messed with, it would not look right. It was either very blurry, or way to small. I did some searching on my friend Google to find some others having problems with blurry images before, but seemed like a rare problem, and no solution was found. A little while after morning came, I decided it was time for some sleep.

The next morning came, and I had decided to tackle my blog again. Still no luck. It didn't make since, I was doing it all right, other people could do it, but I simply couldn't. After almost giving up, I tried a few more things and thought I had found the solution, but I hadn't yet. I could feel closer and closer every minute. I researched the problem some more and found a comment thread that was overlooked the night before. Some others were having the exact same problem. It was a bug on the site! To make things worse, this bug had only appeared within the last 24 hours. Just my luck, that of all the days to start a blog, I chose the day with blurry images. As you can tell by the non-blurred banner, I did find a solution to the problem. I uploaded the picture to Photobucket and simply linked the picture, instead of uploading it straight to Blogger. My timing was bad.

Often times in life, we wonder why things don't go the way we want them to. Just like I did with my image, we feel like we're doing everything right. We ask questions such as, "Why won't things just work out?", "Why can't life be fair?", "Why do I have to get this bad luck?". My answer to that is simply this: Our timing is bad. God has a time for everything (See Ecclesiastes 3:1-8), we just don't often see it. We think we've been doing everything right, and we may well have been, but our timing is off. Life isn't going to wait on us, but sometimes, we must wait on it. We have to remember that while we are often demanding and want things at our convenience, we just have to wait. There are things beyond our control. Just like with my picture, I wanted it to be done and uploaded correctly the first night. But it didn't happen; the site's bug was beyond my control. I could  have kept trying and trying all night long, but it wouldn't have done any good. When things don't work out according to OUR plans, there's no point in relishing on the fact, and trying over and over to make them happen. We must accept that our timing is not right. Sometimes, we have to find another way, a workaround, until the problem is fixed. Other times, we must simply wait, and make sure our timing is right. The only way I know to do that is by going with God's time.

"But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they sun run and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint." Isaiah 40:31